Back in January when the Matt Stevens affair became public, I wrote about the apparent double standards that appeared to have been applied to him, as opposed to Mike Tindall's driving ban for driving under the influence of alcohol.
Well, the drugs issue has well and truly come back into the spotlight again, with the news that Bath players Andrew Higgins, Alex Crockett and England international Michael Lipman have resigned from the club, following the now well publicised ‘party at the Church’.
Justin Harrison's hasty departure has also been linked with this occasion, and it looks like the folk running Bath Rugby Club have some serious employment law issues on their hands. Speculation is rife that the gang of three, as I shall call them henceforth, have jumped before they were pushed and are about to launch a bitter legal attack to clear their apparently sullied names.
Blogs such as this one and more esteemed columnists such as Brian Moore and Neil Back have responded to the current furore with what seem to be well reasoned, man-in-the-street reactions, which basically amount to "if they've nothing to hide, why refuse a test?".
As Moore also asserts in his column for the Telegraph, though, rugby as a sport does not usually attract the lurid headlines that football gets for the misdemeanours of its participants but, when there is a story to be had, it doesn't deserve special treatment either.
For me, this has been something that has long protected rugby union as a sport. There hasn't been any real evidence of a particular ‘drugs culture’ in the sport, but only in the same way that there is no evidence of a drugs culture in the field of pro-celebrity bog-snorkelling.
And yet, something that rugby is known for – if not exactly famous as such – is a drinking culture.
Who hasn't heard the stories of raucous nights out, with hilarious drinking games that cause idiotic behaviour in rugby club-houses, forfeits having to be performed which would turn the stomachs of onlookers, followed by vomiting in streets and other public places?
These are the sorts of things that are brushed off, in fact positively lauded, by the rugby cognoscenti. It's all a bit of a laugh, right?
Yet if a football team were to do something of that nature, we'd see press comments about it expressing outrage for weeks – remember Gazza's ‘dentist chair’ incident prior to some World Cup or other? Wouldn't even have got a mention had it been a rugby team.
The holier-than-thou attitude that some rugby fans and administrators seem to have suggests that the rugby culture is something that is upstanding and honourable, espousing the values of comradeship, teamwork and hard work paying off. You can tell these people quite quickly – they use the phrase ‘our great game’ with impunity.
While those values are at the heart of the game of rugby, they are not unique to it, and nor is rugby immune from everyday life. The good side of the rugby culture is held up time and time again – seen as a model for young citizens to develop into good people – yet the bad side is rarely reported.
This is where it is possible that our modern day professional rugby players have got the wrong end of the stick. With the increased amount of money and spare time that professionals have over their amateur-era counterparts, there are more things on offer than just alcohol. But if it happens in a pub or club, it's all right isn't it? After all, what goes on tour...