Give a policeman a shiny new truncheon and see how long it hangs idly from his belt. Much the same principle applied at Kingsholm on Saturday where the referee Steve Savage dutifully set about exploring the full range of sin-bin possibilities inside the season's first 32 minutes. You scarcely needed to listen to the wounded tenor of Dick Best's post-match remarks to feel London Irish were the recipients of a rather unfair official coshing.
Having started well, the Exiles problems stemmed from the award of a penalty try in the 17th minute when Peter Rogers, Irish's debutant loose-head prop, was deemed to have dropped a scrum once too often. As well as conceding seven points, it earned him the distinction of being the Premiership's first sin-binned player and triggered a chain of events which allowed a below-par Gloucester to escape a disturbing fate.
With Jake Boer hauled off to ensure a specialist frontrow replacement, Irish proved stubborn adversaries even with Rogers, Kent-born and Welsh-educated but most recently employed by the Gauteng Lions, twiddling his meaty thumbs.
Gloucester's pack, marched miles backwards at one eyecatching scrum, already knew they were in a battle when, with Rogers back, the Cherry and Whites were awarded a free-kick on their own 22. As Scott Benton took a quick tap, Rogers failed to retreat 10 metres and, for this unpardonable act allied to his earlier white card, the astonished prop saw red.
The gallant 14 remaining visitors, with Boer again removed to allow Mike Worsley to fill the front-row void, were back in front at 19-16 with 25 minutes to go. Then, Mark Mapletoft, also sin-binned in the 51st minute for a spot of shirt-pulling, re-emerged to knock over a couple more wellstruck penalties and nip through for the decisive 71st-minute try in a personal haul of 24 points. Even then the visitors substitute winger Simon Berridge had to be desperately bundled into touch as he surged up the left touchline in injury-time, confirming Best's belief that his eclectic squad had not had the rub of the green.
"I'm in favour of the sin-bin concept but we've seen the downside today," he said, pleading for common sense while simultaneously testing the threatened clampdown on coaches who publicly criticise referees.
"We lost a game and two points by a somewhat erratic decision which I'm struggling to come to terms with. I see a month of this nonsense before things settle down." He is now waiting to see what precedent is set regarding any ban on Rogers, guilty of two technical offences rather than foul play.
Gloucester, who go to Reading to face Richmond this weekend, encountered an Irish side defending, in Best's words, "like a pack of dogs". A crowd of only 5,267, perhaps a reflection on a 40 per cent hike in season-ticket prices, saw "a very jittery performance" on the admission of Gloucester's director of rugby Richard Hill.
"Unless we play 100 per cent better next week we'll end up with a very big defeat. It wasn't a typical Gloucester performance. It was more like our away form." In short, there were miserable sinners all over the place. 9994180
Scorers: Gloucester: Tries: Penalty try, Mapletoft. Conversions: Mapletoft 2. Penal- ties: Mapletoft 5. London Irish: Try: Jones. Conversion: Woods. Penalties: Woods 5.
Gloucester: Catling; Johnson, Fanolua, Tombs, Saint-Andre; Mapletoft, Benton; Woodman, McCarthy (Fortey, 65min), Vickery (Deacon, 73), Fidler, Sims (capt) (Cornwell, 65), Ojomoh, Carter, Devereux.
London Irish: O'Shea (capt); Bishop, Venter, Burrows (Todd, 65), Woods (Berridge, 80); Jones (Brown, 78), Campbell; Rogers, Kirke (Howe, 50), Hardwick (Fullman, 50), Harvey, O'Kelly, Boer (Worsley, 32), Dawson, Spicer.
Referee: S Savage (Warwickshire).
