Azam inquiry seems to be colossal waste of time

The game of rugby union football, I have been reading for the past week and more, is in a state of crisis. The reasons for this condition are said to be that several players have been charged with foul play of one sort or another – punching, kicking, spitting – and that one of them has been accused of racial abuse.

The players in the first category are Olivier Azam, Austin Healey, Alex Sanderson, Matt Stewart and Epi Taione. The player who is accused of racial abuse is Azam, a Frenchman who plays for Gloucester. He is said to have called Taione, a Polynesian who is in the Newcastle team, a "black bastard''.

The Rugby Football Union's disciplinary panel, chaired by Commodore Jeff Blackett, has dealt with the run-of-mill, thuggish charges with punishments ranging from a reprimand for Sanderson – who has, so it appears, the habit of spitting indiscriminately during matches – to three weeks' suspension for Azam for committing the same offence. There were three weeks' suspension for Taione, and the same spell for Healey, which conveniently leaves the latter eligible to be selected for England in the first match of the Six Nations' Championship.

A similar indulgence was extended to Martin Johnson last season after he had been found guilty of kneeing the Saracens' outside-half nastily in the ribs. Healey's fooling around with his foot in Leicester's match against Sale, though technically a kick, was neither so serious in its consequences nor so malign in its intent. Accordingly no great injustice was done in the vast cosmic sweep of rugby's disciplinary history.

But while the normal, kick-and-make-up charges have been got out of the way with reasonable expedition – even if to few observers' satisfaction – the charge of racial abuse against Azam has yet to be decided. There is to be an inquiry under what is described as a "senior legal figure'' or, more specifically, a High Court judge.

After the disciplinary hearing leading to the reprimand and suspensions I have outlined, Commodore Blackett solemnly declared the Azam-Taione case sub judice and sternly prohibited players and officials from talking about it to the press.

Before the matter reached this stage, Rob Andrew, the Newcastle manager, had raised it indignantly, immediately after the match. Tom Walkinshaw, Gloucester's Mr Moneybags, who is if anything even more loquacious than Andrew, responded by illegally banning him from Kingsholm and by commissioning a report on the business which was clearly expecting the answer "No" and which, according to newspaper accounts, extends to 65 pages.

My own question is: has everyone gone completely off his head?

Robert Horner, the disciplinary officer of the RFU, was quoted as saying: "Whether we'll ever get at the full story depends on the evidence unearthed and whether it can be fitted together into one coherent issue. It's very emotive, it's a bit like turning the clock back eight centuries to witchcraft. If someone was accused of being a witch they [sic] were deemed to be guilty until they proved themselves innocent. An allegation of racism tends to stick without there being a great deal of evidence behind it.''

I do not know Robert Horner, but have spoken to him several times on the telephone and always found him helpful and courteous. On this occasion (he was reported by my colleague Tim Glover in the Independent on Sunday) he was perhaps too civil and open. If I had been in his place, which thank the Lord I'm not sir, I should I hope have been more discreet. My sympathies are however, largely on Horner's side.

Perhaps I feel this way because I am a Welshman. For centuries the Welsh have been subjected to what the libel lawyers call "vulgar abuse''. We still are. I have certainly been called a "Welsh bastard'' and, more recently – when the word acquired a metropolitan currency on account of low-life television serials – a "Welsh git''. We do not repine; are used to it; take it on the chin; and pass on.

I do not know whether Taione feels the same indifference about Azam's remark – which, if seriously intended to be insulting, would presumably have been made in the speaker's own native tongue, French. I may be wrong about this, but Taione does not seem to have been consulted much. Even if he wishes to take the matter further, it seems a colossal waste of the time of a High Court judge, assuming the RFU can summon one up as if by magic.

Racial discrimination – the denial of rights or opportunities to persons because of their race – is a serious matter. Abuse is trivial. No one could accuse Graham Henry, the Wales coach, of racism. Nevertheless Martyn Madden, the outstanding Llanelli loose-head prop who is not even in the Welsh squad, may well feel he has a greater cause for complaint than Epi Taione.