What if Darcy Swain made a throat-slash gesture to a New Zealand player?

Darcy Swain seems to be Australasian rugby’s villain du jour.

If he made a throat-slitting gesture at a New Zealand player, how would we like that? And, if not Swain, then just a rank and file Wallaby then?

But if an All Black – in this case Ardie Savea – stoops to that level, apparently we should all move on. Nothing to see here, this is a model citizen who’s made a fulsome apology so stop clutching your pearls.

Well, I’m not sure it’s our place to be the moral arbiters here and I certainly don’t think New Zealand Rugby’s media shills should be declaring this kind of behaviour doesn’t require strong sanction.

This isn’t about passion or competitiveness and a win-at-all-costs mentality. It’s just grubby.

Many of our leading rugby players appear to style themselves after NBA stars. Guys such as Ja Morant, who has just issued a mea culpa or his own for some even more dopey behaviour than Savea’s.

In many ways I’m less interested in Savea’s act than the reaction to it.

What we’ll tolerate when it’s one of our own, as opposed to the howls of outrage that would accompany the same thing from someone else.

Ideology will inevitably make a hypocrite of you and our prevailing rugby one is that our players are more virtuous than yours.

Well, in the same way that we pat players on the back for the various acts of virtue signalling, so we should criticise them when they resort to using the international symbol for “you’re a dead man.’’

But we haven’t done that here. We’ve said Savea is a great bloke, that this is out of character, that he knows he’s done the wrong thing and that he should be forgiven.

I like Savea. I’ve argued at different times that he ought to be All Blacks captain and applauded him for the way he’s worn his status as an icon of the Samoan community.

But what happened in Melbourne was no good and we should be big enough to say so.

If not, then we’ll need to demonstrate the same level of tolerance when someone we don’t like does something to offend our collective sensibilities.

When, say, an opposing player or team doesn’t treat the haka in the way that we’d prefer or – as Quade Cooper did – they tangle with the wrong guy, we’ll need to rush to their defence, not condemn them.

The days of making cartoon clowns out of other teams’ coaches are over.

Or, at least they should be, if we hope to retain a shred of dignity.