From the reaction to the way that Robin van Persie has chosen to treat his damaged ligaments, you would think that what the Arsenal forward was up to was weird or something.

Face the facts, though. If a footballer can’t fly out to have placenta fluid massaged into his ankles by a Serbian housewife without newspapers shouting “Quackers!” at him in big letters ... well, it’s a sad day for open-mindedness, is what we say.

In fairness, the story did calm down as the week developed and further details emerged. The earliest reports, for example, indicated that the placenta in question was human. This enabled the treatment to be referred to as a “controversial placenta cure”. In later versions of the story, though, the placenta was downgraded to horse and subsequently to pig. Which is less controversial, obviously.

Early reports also seemed to be implying that Van Persie was going to be rubbed with a substantial part of, or even a whole placenta, as if with some kind of meaty flannel. This seemed an uncomfortable thought, wherever the placenta had come from.

Again, though, it eventually emerged that Van Persie’s ankle would be massaged not with a big lump of placenta, but with fluid extracted from a placenta. And, again, that seemed more logical.

Then it turned out that Van Persie wasn’t the only footballer to have sought placenta-based relief in Serbia and that, in fact, only this week, Glen Johnson, Yossi Benayoun and Albert Riera, of Liverpool, had been out there, having various bits manipulated with the zinc-rich birthing by-product.

Furthermore, players from teams as far apart as Groningen and Ajax were ready to speak up for the healing powers of Serbian-sourced placenta, all of which graphically reduced the “nut-job loner” aspect of the original story about Van Persie.

But what’s everybody’s problem with placenta anyway? It’s widely accepted that the placenta is a valuable source of stem cells and iron. In Hollywood, apparently, no one thinks anything of adding a touch of it to his or her face cream. Flash-fried with black pudding and onions, it makes a tasty fall-back for anyone looking to ring the changes on a full English breakfast. And if you had enough of it, you could probably serve it instead of turkey and get a big reaction this Christmas.

Doubtless there will be some commentators whose ire will centre on the fact that these players are going private — moreover, going abroad for their treatment. But have you tried getting an appointment to see a Serbian housewife with access to her own placenta on the NHS recently? Months can go by.

As for getting a Serbian housewife with access to her own placenta to come out and visit you at home — forget it.

Incidentally, that whole “Serbian housewife” thing: that, too, was principally a detail of the story in its earliest forms, an attempt, perhaps, to drum up the image of someone batty in a headscarf with a Tupperware tub of something frightening in the pantry.

In due course, though, the “Serbian housewife” became a “radical physiotherapist” and, soon after that, “Mariana Kovacevic”. Serbian housewife? Ms Kovacevic just happens to work from home, as quite a lot of physiotherapists do.

Apparently, Manchester City tried to take her on to their full-time staff. And just because City have got more money than sense these days, we shouldn’t infer anything about the practices — effective or otherwise — of Ms Kovacevic.

Remember, it’s not all that long ago that football’s idea of a cure for everything — from a split lip to a broken tibia — was a wet sponge. Trainers were deemed sophisticated and ahead of their time if they could also apply to the general area of the wound copious amounts of misty spray from a mysterious aerosol can — probably Right Guard. If football is seriously investigating alternatives to “just run it off, son”, we shouldn’t be sniggering, we should be applauding from the delivery room.

Cry “Quackers!” if you must, but it’s whatever works, surely, and good luck to everybody concerned.

Who knows? Future generations of football followers may not even blanch when they say: “One touch of the trainer’s magic afterbirth and he was right as rain.”

Paris breaks mould by mastering true art of winning

Continued kudos to the organisers of the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 series, whose commitment to rewriting the entire, hackneyed language of the trophy presentation hit magisterial new heights in Paris last weekend with the commemorative work of art offered to Novak Djokovic.

The still-panting Serb was invited to lift aloft, in the direction of the cameras, a plinth-mounted array of blackened steel rivets that critics were quick to agree was sophisticated in its composition and quite terrifying in its beauty. Also, probably, pretty heavy. And quite sharp in a couple of places. Whatever, silver-plated pots with fancy handles have never looked so over.

Shades of 2003, in the same city, when a victorious Tim Henman was handed nothing less than a bronze-cast tree — a piece that, in its mute simplicity, seemed to be an ample expression of life’s mournful frailty, while also being, patently, a big ask when it came to the overhead lockers on the plane home.

We are some way, clearly, from the vulgar moped, car and even helicopter giveaways that characterise the ceremonial climaxes in other, more nakedly materialist sports, such as cricket and golf and cricket again.

But how long, one wonders, before tennis pushes the conceptual boat out still farther and begins to incorporate yet more ambitious, possibly even situational pieces, mirroring recent important strands of thought in contemporary art?

It’s exciting to think that we may be closing in on the day when there will be no trophy as such, but when Robin Söderling, say, will simply be given a bare room in which one or two strip lights are going on and off at regulated intervals.

Or maybe the consequences of Juan Martín del Potro, for instance, going all the way in Munich will be that a man in a bear suit goes and stands very still in the atrium of a deserted office block in Düsseldorf.

The future of tennis is art. Bring it on.

National anthem rendition has The Vex Factor

A few words, if we may, in support of Ras Dumisani, who stepped up to the microphone to lead the singing of the South African national anthem before the rugby union international in Toulouse last Friday and who has experienced nothing but stick ever since for his troubles — and stick at positively white-hot, Jedward levels.

“A travesty”, “an insult” and “treason” were some of the kinder verdicts. Springbok players said, menacingly, that the rendition was “disappointing”.

Review Dumisani’s performance yourself, though, on YouTube. OK, there’s a certain amount of word-slippage here and there. Some of the handling is a touch on the sloppy side. And the middle section is, without question, a rolling maul, possibly involving a bit of blind-side gouging.

But on The X Factor they would call this kind of thing “making the song your own”. And what is never in doubt, at any point during the 17 minutes or so for which the South African national anthem cranks on, is that the Durban-born reggae artist is singing it as if he means it. And, accordingly, what he sounds like is a typical rugby fan singing a national anthem.

So what’s the problem? And when did everyone around rugby get so prissy? I blame that Katherine Jenkins.