WHEN Wales were put in the dock ahead of last week’s meeting with England, they were lucky to have Warren Gatland in charge of them.

Having brought extra players in to train with his squad as they struggled with mounting injury problems, a humourless smile played on Gatland’s lips when he was asked to respond to the charge, surely levelled only by the twee-est and most naive observers, that his management had been accused of breaching not the rules themselves but the spirit of them.

“Whatever that means...,” he responded.

A less worldly head coach might have been distracted but, by the end of the weekend, the capacity of the two-time Grand Slam and Lions series-winning coach to make clear-headed decisions had proven crucial.

He knows what matters in a fiercely competitive situation and that sticking rigidly to some unquantifiable spirit of what a well-meaning law-maker intended is not going to win you many games.

I have been consistent on this for years. When Leicester’s Neil Back notoriously knocked the ball from Peter Stringer’s hand at the scrum, as Munster pressed in vain during the dying moments of the 2002 Heineken Cup final, I defended his actions.

Compared with what had been happening at the breakdowns all day, Back’s offence was blatant and almost more honest because he should have been caught.

It is sport. Set the rules. Appoint adjudicators to ensure that people stick to them or otherwise, then get on with it.

For my money, the problems that truly threaten the fabric of sport are those that genuinely undermine its capacity to help us improve the health of society.

On that basis, violent and dangerous play must be minimised while anything that can be done to get rid of dope peddlers and match-fixers, including jail sentences let alone sporting sanctions, should be pursued with vigour.

Comparing breaches of ‘the spirit’ of the competitive rules of sport to that sort of abuse represents a disturbing loss of perspective.

Sporting rules offer parameters within which people operate, no more, no less.

Some will choose not to play on a Sunday, just as some will choose to stick to some arcane notions of ‘gentlemanly behaviour’, which is up to them. However, surely at the professional level, with officials on hand to make decisions and TV cameras there to offer replays of incidents, let’s just apply the rules as best we can.

It does not take some huge ethical leap to accept that amateur sport, which is often more of a social activity, is different.

On which note, as someone who bats and bowls equally badly, I found it refreshing when, challenged by an English interviewer a few years ago, Mike Hussey, the Australian batsman known as “Mr Cricket”, said something to the effect of: “I don’t walk, mate.”

I have come across more than a few instances of those who have built a reputation for ‘walking’, only to use that to their advantage at key moments.

The supercilious tripe spouted by bowlers about this is worst of all. I’ve been out many more times to appalling, pressure-induced LBW shouts than I’ve been given not out when nicking one to the wicket-keeper.

The reaction of peers is often a key element and, in that regard, I was disappointed by the overblown reaction of Laura Davies to Suzann Pettersen’s decision to play hardball, Seve-style, which arguably elevated the Solheim Cup to a different level in terms of its importance to those taking part.

When Pettersen refused to let Alison Lee get away with her presumption that a two-foot putt would be given, I could not help but mentally compare her behaviour with that of a rather pompous old gent I know who frequently gives himself five-foot putts in the knowledge that those he is playing with are too polite to call him.

As with Wales’ spiritual blasphemy, however, the nature of such matters is in the eye of the beholder and, just for the record, it actually is unfair that, partly because of proximity but also because of superior resources to rivals, Wales could bring in additional players to their training sessions last week.

However, those who failed to anticipate that should simply have realised their mistake and resolved to ensure that the rules were clear on the matter in future.

As for invoking spirits, may I suggest we leave that to dodgy clairvoyants and the dafties who believe in that sort of thing, albeit I suspect there’s a fair bit of cross-over between that constituency and the stuffy cornflake-splutterers who worry about the secret codes that make their sport special while endorsing, implicitly or explicitly, all sorts of obnoxious prejudice.