Ronan O’Gara versus Phil Neville. Who would you rather be? Or rather, how do like to have your sporting villains hung, drawn and quartered? Do you want their entrails splattered across the backpages? Because when you are an international athlete and skill and judgement desert you, at the very time when you need them most, you are of course letting down a “nation”. And it’s one thing to let down a nation, but O’Gara let down four (and we could easily make that five, but let’s not go there).

You know where we are. O’Gara: the Saturday before last, making the error(s) that run-of-play suggests cost the Lions a Test match. Or at least a Test draw. And Phil Neville: 20th June 2000, misjudging a tackle on Viorel Moldovan and conceding the penalty that effectively knocked England out of the European Championships.

The accepted way is that the media assassination of football’s villains is infinitely more withering than those in rugby. Or indeed in any other sport. And it is indeed the case that while anyone who watched the second Lions Test in Loftus Versfeld appreciates the heavy cost of O’Gara’s error of judgement, he has escaped from the print media largely unscathed. There is barely a headline that bears his name. No hysteria. No crucifixion. No one called for him to return his tour fee. And no sign of a vegetable onto which his face has been photo-shopped. Nothing.

But try rewinding nine years to Phil Neville and England versus Romania at Charleroi. The sides were level 2-2 until Neville brought down Moldovan and failed to get a touch of the ball. I make the comparison because it was an error about as honest and flawed as O’Gara’s and also because I was there to witness both.

Now, sporting stereotypes did not apply here. Neville was neither hung, drawn nor quartered. The Mirror headline had “Phil joins the hall of shame” and The Sun’s was both “Bitter Phil to swallow” and “Phil penalty horror”. Hard to read, maybe, if you are Neville (do we think he paid the press the slightest attention the following day? No.) But this was not a character assassination. Not a vegetable in sight.

It remains the case that you are far more likely to suffer media assassination if you are:

a) foreign (Cristiano Ronaldo, Germany ’06, Hand of God etc) though that’s plain obvious;

b) in charge (Graham Taylor, Kevin Keegan etc);

c) perceived to be in possession of questionable personality (David Beckham, France ’98, David Seaman, Japan ‘02) or

d) responsible for whipping up an air of national hope and excitement and then not being able to justify it (Tim Henman).

Beckham in ’98 was the face at the centre of a dartboard printed in the Daily Mirror and there was also that effigy hanging outside a London pub. This cannot have been easy to deal with, no matter how thick-skinned you pretend to be. His return to domestic football and its stadia around the country cannot have been much fun either.

But O’Gara is a fascinating sporting villain. Since my return from covering the Lions in South Africa, it has been clear: rugby people want to talk about him. He has made a lot of people feel extremely passionate about their sport.