Brutal Bananaman

Smash hits! England battering ram Banahan will not curb his brutal methods

So ran the somewhat hysterical headline in today's Daily Fail who, it appears, can't stomach the sight of an 18 stone, 6 foot 7 inch, tattooed Channel Islander playing for England in place of their soon-to-be anointed favourite adopted royal son.

The hate-mongering rag quality daily paper appears somewhat disappointed that Banahan is unlikely to be cited after his collision with Scotland's Kelly Brown on Saturday, a collison which left the Scot unconscious.

Predictably enough, the paper's readership (Outraged of Tunbridge Wells etc) are more than happy to hop on board the bandwagon in their condemnation with liberal sprinklings of words like disgraceful, thuggery and animal, despite almost certainly not even having seen the incident (or, I suspect, having ever seen any game of rugby).

Now, I'm no particular fan of the somewhat limited Banahan, but it's pretty obvious that all he did here was dip his shoulder and bounce Brown off. That he raised his arm to shrug off the tackler after contact was incidental. If anything Bahahan showed excellent technique, which is more than can be said for Brown who went in too high and with his head in the wrong place.

I'd be astonished if citing commissioner Russell Howell (who, the odious tabloid high-brow publication claims, is studying footage of the incident) gives this more than a second's thought before confirming that there's no case to answer.