The court of public opinion

You shouldn’t laugh but I have to confess that my first reaction to the infamous, inexcusable biting incident was more blank amazement than shock or disgust when I first saw it. I still can’t really fathom the thought processes – or absence of them – that makes a human being ditch several million years of civilisation and behave like that.

But I want to focus on how football and the world has reacted to what he did as much as the incident, because that is really quite odd too.

Suarez has been banned for ten matches and I doubt anyone would say it didn’t serve him right. The acid test, of course, will be whether his club takes their lead from the FA and imposes a similarly strict sanction.

The first comments from Liverpool starting they are “shocked and disappointed”

seem to suggest that doing what’s right will take second place to their own self-interest.

No doubt player and club will take comfort from the fact that no less a moral authority than Mike Tyson – a man not averse to the odd nibble of human flesh – is on their side.

But maybe it’s more complicated than that.

The average punishment for the catch-all offence of violent conduct is a three match ban.

In 2008, Martin Taylor broke the leg of Arsenal player Eduardo in a tackle so sickening, Sky refrained from replaying it. His punishment for an admittedly unintentional but catastrophic action was a three match ban.

Suarez, remember didn’t break his opponent’s skin.

Then there’s spitting, the preferred mode of self-expression for players who take their inspiration from camels, not carnivores.

Foul and disgusting as the habit is, to put it crudely, no one has ever been hospitalised by a mouthful of phlegm. Yet Patrick Vieira got a six-match ban for spitting. You have to ask where is the proportionality in punishments for these offences?

The answer is twofold. First, in any contact sport, there must be tolerances and an acceptance that there will be accidents and misjudgements that lead to hurt and injuries.

Outlawing sliding tackle, tackles from behind and two-footed tackles has mitigated risk but not removed it.

Many say the game has gone soft. I can’t agree. Football is played at a tempo unimaginable 50 years ago and on a radically different surface. A return to the old ways would create mayhem.

But the real reason we’re talking about Suarez, rather than the amazing Champions League events in Munich or Dortmund, is that he did something that isn’t just wrong, but socially unacceptable. The disgust we feel is disproportionate to the harm he has done, but he has put himself beyond the pale and he won’t ever be allowed to forget it.

That, of course, will be his biggest punishment, not the ban.

On the pitch, or in the courts, we don’t have a coin-in-the-slot justice system where you tap in the code for an offence and out pops a standard punishment. Laws and sanctions reflect attitudes and beliefs that may often be illogical, but which reflect a general consensus on what we believe is right and wrong for our society. It leads to anomalies but life isn’t run on straight lines.

There’s no higher court than the court of public opinion. Once bitten by those judges and, believe me, you’re twice shy.