Dirty French!

To balance out some of the francophilia often found around here, I direct your attention to this:

France will be without Julien Dupuy for the Six Nations after the Stade Francais scrum-half was hammered with a 24-week ban for gouging Ulster flanker Stephen Ferris.

After considering the evidence, independent judicial officer Judge Jeff Blackett (England) found that the incident was at the top end in the level of seriousness for an offence of this type and imposed the six-month ban following a lengthy hearing in Dublin.

You know what's a bad idea? Sticking your fingers in some dude's eyes in a game that is televised. Bad idea.

I'm not sure which is my favorite part of this story: Ferris' reaction after the game (in which he said that if he'd been punched he'd just sort of accept it as part of the game, man up, and move on, but gouging was different), or Stade's insistence that a photograph capturing the image of Dupuy's teammate David Attoub also gouging Ferris had been doctored. Awesome!

So my Friday open question for everyone: why are the French such cheaters? (Ok, I'm mostly joking about this, but it's telling that the scourge of eye-gouging has mostly been eliminated from the game in Britain, while it continues to happen in France.)

And no, again, this doesn't have anything to do with war.