ONLY a one-eyed Midlander could fail to understand Julian Dupuy's decision to live and work in Paris rather than Leicester.

Only a one-eyed Frenchman could begin to understand the scrum-half's decision to appeal against his six-month ban for eye-gouging.

To be fair, there are plenty of the latter about, and Max Guazzini, Dupuy's club president at Stade Francais had plenty of supporters when he condemned the ban as "very political and anti-French".

He lost a few of those when he complained that the competition's governing body, the ERC, "wanted to make an example of a symbolic player of Stade Français and of the French team which has never had a disciplinary problem".

And even more when he complained that "it's not normal that a private organisation in Ireland prevents a club employee from working, from playing. It is we who pay him."

And it is Stade Francais who pay the lawyers too.

M'learned amis will no doubt argue that, in the light of the eight-week ban handed out to Schalk Burger in the summer when the Springbok was found guilty of, as the law book defines it, "making contact with the eye area" of British and Irish Lions winger Luke Fitzgerald, Dupuy's punishment is excessive.

They will also cite precedent in that Perpignan's Romanian international hooker Marius Tincu was able to exploit technicalities in the national law of France to escape an 18-week ban imposed by the ERC for the same offence in November 2008.

But if Stade Francais and Dupuy pull a similar trick, the sport is threatened on two counts.

Any success in invalidating the authority of the tournament's governing body would impact not just on cross-border competitions such as the Heineken Cup but on all competitions in all countries.

All have their rules, and their disciplinary procedures by which the participants undertake to abide.

Once the principle is established that a team may pick or choose the regulations it observes and the tribunals it recognises, the potential for self-serving lawlessness multiplies.

And if it can be proved that the ERC has no legal authority over its participating clubs, it is surely only a small step before the clubs start challenging their national unions in the courts and the unions take on the global authority, the IRB?

And, somewhere in the process, the whole point will have been lost. Eye-gouging is generally regarded by rugby players as the nastiest and most cowardly act of foul play. There is widespread concern that as the stakes get ever higher and the rewards ever greater the practice will increase. Even before Schalk Burger's act of violence, there were calls for greater vigilance from referees and harsher penalties from disciplinary bodies. In imposing a 24-week ban on Dupuy, the ERC is only reflecting the wishes of the majority of people connected with the sport. There is no place for eye-gouging in rugby, and no excuse for it. Harsh penalties are needed as a deterrent to any player who might, for short-term temporary gain, contemplate the permanent destruction of an opponent's health.

And it's not as if Dupuy is mounting an appeal on the grounds that a mistake has been made. On the Stade Francais website, Dupuy and prop David Attoub – also cited for eye-gouging in the same match – have apologised to Ulster players and fans and described their own actions as "idiotic and stupid" but, in mitigation, not "premeditated or intentional".

But now they're singing a different tune. Attoub is trying to claim that the photographs which incriminated him were somehow manipulated. Dupuy is stressing his own lack of premeditation – an argument which would be easier to sustain if he had not been caught on television "making contact with the eye area" of Ulster flanker Stephen Ferris – not once, but twice.

I remember thinking at the time that Ferris made a bit of a meal of the first incident, that Dupuy's original movement was more of a rake across the face than a gouge into the eye-socket, but that, given the sensitivity surrounding the issue, it was an unnecessarily risky thing to do.

To repeat the action a few seconds later was an unnecessarily stupid thing to do. It's probably just as well that players can't be banned for stupidity, but equally they shouldn't be excused their stupidity to prove a legal point. Dupuy and Stade Francais owe it to the sport to put up and shut up.