As the amateurism debate rumbled on in the Eighties, some rugby people came up with a soft approach to the big question. They said that players should be able to accept money for public appearances, motivational speaking, product endorsement, “writing” books and going on telly - but no one should ever, ever receive money for playing. If they did, the game would instantly become unplayable.

This showed a pretty bleak view of humanity, it must be said. The argument was that rugby is so violent a game, one played so close to the edge of self-control, that once money came in, all vestige of civilised play would be relinquished.

But that is very much what is happening. It's just taken rather longer than diehards predicted. The footage of Schalk Burger's assault on Luke Fitzgerald in the second international between the Lions and South Africa is nothing less than grotesque. A thick ear and a bruised face is one thing, the possibility of blindness is quite another. This is simply horrifying.

I don't think I have ever heard a more wilfully stupid remark in sport than that of the South Africa coach, Peter de Villiers: “It's sport, man. This is what it's all about.”

Well, it's not. Eye-gouging is not sport. It's criminal assault. Eye-gouging can damage the vision of the assaulted person for the rest of his life. It can lead to blindness. You can't control the degree of severity of a good gouge.

And if that's sport, I'm Geoffrey Boycott's granny. And if Burger isn't given an exemplary punishment, then rugby will be giving in to expedient, as it has so many times before. So far Burger's punishment has been ten minutes in the sin-bin and a decisive part in a famous victory. Violent cheats prosper - that's rugby's message to the world.

There are two important conclusions to reach from this shocking incident. The first is that if players are professional, the disciplinary process must be professional. Instead, the approach to discipline is governed by the traditional amateur's assumptions: that we're all good chaps together, that boys will be boys, that there's no malice in any of it and besides, what's done on the pitch stays on the pitch. But professional violence can be controlled only by professional vigilance.

The second point is that the entire concept of the Lions tour is an anachronism. The professionalising of the game has brought it to the very edge of being unworkable. A Lions tour involves a scratch side representing the ancient colonial masters going out to meet the fully baked sides of the formerly ruled. It's by definition a mismatch.

There's no stopping the Lions, because there are huge amounts of money being paid for the joys of beating up the old empire-builders - but the zeal with which this task is carried out has made the game impossibly violent. The vindictive and potentially lethal targeting of Brian O'Driscoll, when the Lions travelled to New Zealand four years ago, is another example of the trend.

Rugby is a violent game, and it is now played by men who - because of professionalism - are harder, bigger, fitter and stronger than ever before. What's more, they all have a huge financial interest in victory. And now there are people out there - people such as De Villiers, a man more interested in impressing us with the size of his testicles than his brain - who tell us that eye-gouging is “what it's all about”.

De Villiers should be banned from the sport, from all sport, for uttering this obscenity. More importantly, rugby needs to start thinking beyond traditional rivalries and its own Byzantine politics and start thinking big. Or there will be no game left.

Rough justice as golf's losers escape censure

We have heard a lot about the athletes who shame Britain this week. We have heard a lot of about the sporting organisation that fails to produce a winner, year after year. So let's all have a good bout of sneering contempt at the Brits who tried and failed and let a nation down.

Let's all curl our lips at them: P Appleyard, P Baker, J Bevan, P Lawrie, O Wilson, S Dyson, B Hume, G Boyd, D McGuigan, J Elson, S Webster, J Howarth. And while we're at it, let's also spit on the names of L Donald, S Khan, M Laird, R Bland, S Dyson (him again), J Rose, P Casey, D Clarke and D Horsey.

There has been a huge outbreak of contempt for the British tennis players who got to Wimbledon on wild cards and failed to win. And yes, it is indeed a bit of a mess. I know we have a go a British tennis in the first week of Wimbledon every year, but this year we have been angrier than usual - and this is a year in which a British junior is defending her singles title and a British man with the biggest chance of victory for three quarters of a century.

Andy Murray - for it is he - remarked pertinently in one of his many pre-tournament interviews, that he failed to understand why the British public have decided that a British tennis player who loses is a disgrace, while a British golfer who fails abysmally is an unlucky fellow.

The first list is the Brits who failed to make the cut at the Open last year; the second, the Brits who failed to make the cut at the US Open the other week. Golf has produced more recent British winners of major tournaments than tennis - Paul Lawrie in 1999 and Nick Faldo in 1986 being the most recent.

But for failed golfers it's all bad luck, better luck next time, while failed tennis players are all traitors. Both attitudes are equally unhealthy.

Wimbledon roof works its magic

What a dry and dismal Wimbledon it has been. Every day, people are looking to the sky and wagging their heads sadly. Too blue. Too sunny. Nothing but tennis to entertain us. The mood in certain parts of the press centre is frankly peevish: when the hell am I going to be able to write my roof story? But as it never rains when you remember your umbrella, so the roof has done its magical best to keep the entire first week dry. Supposed to be nice today, too.

O'Gara fails to eliminate the negative

It's a strange thing that can happen to you when you get the dreaded negative instruction. You know that above all, there is one thing that you mustn't do: and so, by a strange quirk in the wiring of the brain, it becomes the one thing that you can't avoid doing.

What strange impulse impelled Ronan O'Gara to make that final, fearful error? His dreadful move - whatever you do, don't concede a penalty - in the final seconds of the international between the Lions and South Africa held the glassy-eyed fascination of the person who double-faults on match-point, who false-starts in the Olympic Final, who handles the ball in the box in the final, who is clean bowled without offering a stroke.

You could see O'Gara's foul being committed almost in slow motion, like a man driven to touch the live wire he had been told on no account to touch. O'Gara, driven by an eerie fascination with disaster, fouled, in the most unsubtle way imaginable, Fourie du Preez, and from the ensuing penalty, the Lions lost both match and series. I bet every time O'Gara walks past a Wet Paint sign he ends up with coloured hands.

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• Graham Spiers