Playing By the Book

In good news for cartoonists and the makers of English dramas aimed at American markets, the convention that golfers shout "fore!" after a shot that endangers others is to be formalised for the first time in a new book of rules for the game to be published next year. The duty to replace divots will also become an official regulation and disqualification will be threatened for any "serious breach of etiquette".

Golf's attempt to clean up the green coincides with a week in which both kinds of football have found their rulebooks tested by high-profile cases. In the rugby code, England was fined £10,000 for briefly fielding 16 players during a World Cup game, while those who represent England in the association code had to cough up £4,400 for a ruckus in the tunnel in Turkey on the same day that five Arsenal players received bans and fines of up to £40,000 for a melee during a game against Manchester United.

This must be the first week for a long time in which more cash has been taken away from top sports stars than given to them. More may soon flow when the Football Association punishes Rio Ferdinand and Manchester United for the fact that the defender went shopping instead of peeing into a drug-tester's pot.

It's well known that the main hobby of professional footballers is golf and so perhaps that game's new rules were prompted by a fear of what relaxing football internationals might do to the country's greens. But there's also a more serious connection between the disciplinary efforts being applied to these different sports played on grass. We have become so used to watching millionaires with the names of major corporations stamped on their chests it's easy to forget the extent to which major sports in Britain remain a clumsy balancing act between Olympian ideals and commercial realism. There's little doubt that the new golf rule-book reflects fears that the stick sport is going the way of the racquet one, with top players shouting and chucking if things go wrong.

But etiquette can only really be expected in encounters where all that's at stake is a handshake. Nobody bothered to cheat in television game shows until the prizes became life-changing. Once several million pounds in awards and endorsements depends on an official's decision or the pitch of a ball, then the guys in the shorts aren't going to be Little Lord Fauntleroy.

But the important question for all sports is the relationship between regulations and regulators. Strict laws should never be employed to shore up weak referees, as has happened consistently in football. A related calculation is the question of to what extent discipline can follow the final whistle. Both the "16th man" and "Arsenal fracas" cases involved incidents that were treated more seriously subsequently than at the time. In the same way, violent conduct that is missed by match officials is often prosecuted later through video evidence.

Yet television also often demonstrates that a goal or try should not have been given or an lbw decision was wrong. These cases are put down to refereeing or umpiring experience on the largely arbitrary basis that no later remedy can be made that changes the result of a game.

The extreme view on sporting discipline is that scrutiny should end when the whistle blows. If the referee fails to notice that you've fielded 16 men or done a Gloucester (the Shakespeare character not the rugby team) on an opponent's eyes, then that should be the end of the matter, rather as the rules of a classroom are dictated by what the teacher sees.

That approach is too barbarian (even in a game like rugby) for me, although the illogic of trusting some decisions to the eye and others to the lens needs to be addressed. The wider difficulties of modern sporting discipline are shown by the fact that a fine remains the preferred censure.

This is a hangover from a time when sportsmen, who played more for love than money, were most vulnerable in their pockets. But now only a seven-figure fine could have any serious effect on top sporting individuals or institutions.

As was proved by the period when English football clubs were removed from European competitions because of hooliganism, the only punishment that works is taking away the ball through either bans or points deductions. The punishment given to Rio Ferdinand will be a crucial test of how tough the authorities are prepared to be.

Other recent disciplinary decisions suggest that they will find a way of handing the player a large cushion before they cane him. An off-the-field confrontation between Manchester United and the Football Association has the dynamics of an on-the-field match between Man U and Dagenham FC. The amateur ethic meets the new ruthlessness.