There were no campaigns protesting the innocence of Wales forward Kevin Moseley after his sending off against France in the winter of 1990, unless one was launched in Pontypool that few knew about.
Nor were 5,000-name petitions handed in to the Five Nations committee back then.
But there was plenty of surprise and disquiet when the disciplinary panel that dealt with Moseley’s case handed him a 32-week suspension. The then Pontypool player later called the sanction “pathetic” and “criminal”.
Where do we start?
Perhaps by coming up with a statement of the obvious, that rugby was a different world in those days and one where pretty much anything went on the pitch short of use of bludgeons and leadpiping.
Never mind being suspended, New Zealand’s Wayne Shelford hadn’t even been sent off 30 months earlier after he’d blindsided Wales lock Huw Richards with a vicious punch in a World Cup semi-final. Shelford played in the final six days later.
Let’s return to Moseley, 6ft 6in, 19st 1lb and nicknamed Boris after the actor Boris Karloff. Legendary Pontypool coach Ray Prosser handed him the title because of his stature and the scar on his cheek the lock received in an unprovoked pub glassing.
The potential for trouble against Les Bleus 32 winters ago had brewed before the match when Moseley and two other Wales players, Mark Jones and Andy Allen, had apparently discussed how to counter the French, who had a reputation for being anything but shrinking violets.
There wasn’t anything too scientific involved.
Moseley has since told WalesOnline in an evocative interview : “Everyone was going on about the French team being super-tough and how good a player Olivier Roumat was in their pack.
“Andy, Jonesy and myself were fed up hearing it. We had a talk and said we’d play like we do for our clubs. We’d have a fight with them and see if the French were up for it.
“At a line-out before I was sent off I’d hit Roumat hard and nearly put him into next week. His legs were wobbly and he was reeling from it.
“Fred Howard, the referee, pulled up Andy for it and gave him a telling off. He’d got the wrong player and I think he realised that and decided to make up for it.”
The final take there, that the official “decided to make up for” getting a previous call wrong, doesn’t exactly square with Howard’s recollections, but such is life.
What no-one disputes is that later in the first half Moseley walked after an incident the match official viewed as stamping.
A look at the video footage suggests the giant Welsh lock would need a pretty good advocate for too many to be persuaded the referee had arrived at a flawed take on the events.
The unlucky man to receive attention from Wales No. 5 that day France wing Marc Andrieu.
Moseley’s faith in his innocence has long-remained, however.
“I didn’t catch Andrieu but Howard had it in for me for the mistake he had made earlier,” said the nine-cap player in his WalesOnline interview.
“What was funny, though, was my mother Christine was at the match. It was only the second game she’d been to in her life and she didn’t know the rules.
“She turned to my dad Victor as I headed toward the tunnel and asked: ‘Where’s our Kevin going?'
“My father had to explain to her I had been sent off.
“The suspension which followed was pathetic. The disciplinary panel were looking to clean the game up and I was made a scapegoat.
“At the hearing I was only allowed yes or no answers. People said at the time that I’d never play for Wales again, but I did, which was fantastic.”
Every cloud and all that.
Howard, aka Fearless Fred for the harsh stance he tended to take towards those who went beyond rugby’s laws on the pitch, has never doubted he made the right decision in dispatching the giant Welsh forward.
He would later tell ESPN of the man he pinged that day: “He weighed it up and decided to stamp. It was quite a vicious stamp around the head region. In those circumstances, you have no second thoughts."
Few disputed that Moseley should have been pointed towards the dressing rooms.
Indeed, Howard revealed he had not received one complaint. "There was not a dissenting voice,” said the official.” The man in charge of Welsh Schools rugby told me that the decision had done more for Welsh rugby than any piece of writing or any words of warning could ever have achieved."
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One writer called Moseley’s action “idiotic”, with Wales going on to lose 29-19 to a France side who had come unstuck in four out of their previous five matches and, if not there for the taking, were vulnerable.
But what happened next did raise eyebrows.
Less than 24 hours after the episode the Five Nations committee sat and hit Moseley with a zinger of a suspension, with chairman Ronnie Dawson explaining: “We believe the sentence is justified and reasonable. There is no place in the game for foul play. We are determined to get rid of it at all levels."
Even the Western Mail’s JBG Thomas, no advocate of ruffianism in rugby, called the sanction “a ridiculously long ban when 10 weeks would have sufficed”.
As he noted above, Moseley did his time and did feature for Wales again, with his Test days ending at the 1991 World Cup.
He operated in a different rugby world — dog eat dog, he has described it as.
A cropped picture of Derek Bevan sending him off is on the front cover of the famous ex-Welsh official’s autobiography.
Days of thunder, for sure.
Sometimes the script went wrong on the pitch and in the disciplinary room.
But Moseley has long moved on, later becoming a sports teacher at Bodmin College in Cornwall. He told The Rugby Paper in 2014 he had been bullied at school and so delayed taking up a sport.
Not many bullied him after he took up playing.
“Off the field I am a very gentle person but the way rugby was back then it was do-or- die mentality,” he said.
The past is a different country, someone once said; they do things differently there.
Kevin Moseley doubtless wouldn't disagree.
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