James Lawton: De Jong has crossed the line this time – the FA must now kick danger men off the park

Ben Arfa was De Jong's second victim of a broken leg this year. In a friendly against the US, the Dutchman ruined Stuart Holden's World Cup dream

(Getty Images)

Here is a phrase that was not exactly bubbling on the lips one recent cold night in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium: thank heavens for Bert van Marwijk.

Back in July, Van Marwijk's Netherlands team had just attempted, mercifully without success, to beat Spain in the World Cup final with a performance which seemed to have found its inspiration in the Stone Age. However, one of the worst of the culprits, Manchester City midfielder Nigel de Jong, yesterday learnt that there may be limits for the perpetrators of violent play.

Van Marwijk's decision yesterday to drop De Jong from the Dutch team after seeing him perform the tackle that broke an opponent's leg in two places at the City of Manchester stadium on Sunday seems to be saying that, no, it simply isn't good enough to endanger a fellow professional's livelihood, carelessly, recklessly, or perhaps even maliciously and then run for cover behind a great bank of indifference or platitudes, often both at the same time.

The Dutch coach declared that De Jong's behaviour had been "too wild".

By comparison, it was probably more depressing than amazing that this most significant football news story of the weekend was whisked through the BBC's Sunday Match of the Day 2 showcase so quickly it scarcely amounted to a mumbled aside.

Sky, the Premier League's host broadcaster, was not much better while pleading the potential squeamishness of viewers who apparently might have been offended or traumatised by seeing what happens when a footballer's leg is broken in two places.

On the BBC, the leg-breaking tackle on Newcastle's exciting French import Hatem Ben Arfa was covered in less time than it took presenter Colin Murray to emerge from a time-warped effusion about Blackpool's victory at Anfield being one of the great convulsions in English football.

Presumably, he was dreaming up another excruciating bon mot during League Two Northampton's Carling Cup triumph scarcely a week earlier.

The FA disciplinary committee will surely have to do a whole lot better.

It will have to cut through the complacency that is most pronounced in those broadcasting outlets which have paid huge amounts, some of it directly from the licence-payers, to show their too frequently soft-focused view of a game that may be vital in the ratings war but does from time to time throw up some contentious and important moral issues.

One of them is whether De Jong, who many will remember for his horrendous tackle on Xabi Alonso in that World Cup final, one so violent and uncontrolled that it eclipsed everything else in the Netherlands' systematic thuggery, should be allowed to escape without, apart from Van Marwijk's, a proper examination of the tackle that broke Ben Arfa's leg in two places.

Yes, football is a physical game and these things happen. However, sometimes they are also part of a pattern and when we look at the latest incident involving De Jong – courtesy of YouTube in the absence of proper coverage elsewhere – it is impossible not, at the very least, to suspect that this is one of them.

City's assistant manager, Brian Kidd, makes the traditional defence in these circumstances. De Jong, we are told, made his tackle "without malice". This was also said of Birmingham City's Martin Taylor when he wiped out the season of Arsenal striker Eduardo two years ago. As Eduardo left the field on a stretcher and with an oxygen mask, the rush was to say that Taylor just "wasn't that kind of player", and that such a catastrophe was the last thing he wanted when he made his grotesquely mistimed tackle.

Maybe it was so, but then the fury of Arsène Wenger was not so hard to understand. Nor was that of Newcastle's Chris Hughton on Sunday when he saw a player of skill and invention cut down so early in the season – and with not even a yellow card for the tackler, who did make some contact with the ball, with his left foot, while trailing his right leg through the back of Ben Arfa's left.

While City officials talked about an absence of form, they could hardly claim a lack of "form". In fact, Ben Arfa was De Jong's second victim of a broken leg this year. Before the World Cup, the Netherlands played the United States in a friendly, one that ruined the hopes of the American player Stuart Holden that he would make it to the great tournament.

Most staggering of all, though, was the kung fu assault on Alonso which escaped what seemed like an inevitable red card, a terrible lapse which the English referee Howard Webb admitted to with some anguish weeks later.

Today there is no challenger to Ben Arfa in the anguish department as he contemplates the abrupt suspension of an English season to which he promised to bring much touch and skill. It is shocking not so much that a referee failed to register the significance of the Newcastle player's fate until it was obvious that he had been horribly injured, but that such an incident, inevitable in the speed of the modern game, was not automatically sent for examination by experts with a clear idea of what they were seeing.

It is still another area where football is inattentive to matters of most vital concern – and basic decency. Certainly, Van Marwijk, however unlikely his credentials may appear, is a welcome visitor to a vacuum which was already an outright scandal before Hatem Ben Arfa went down.

Golf has to learn that television must come second

Because of its glorious, self-sustaining format and the quality of some of its most competitive figures, the Ryder Cup yesterday survived the most desperate exploitation by its organisers.

So appalling was the decision to take the event to a Welsh valley at such a late date and a course ill-equipped to deal with rainfall that would have been comfortably absorbed by one of Britain's superb links courses, it would be nice to imagine that the game has learnt an important lesson.

However, it is still hard to be sanguine about the instincts of a world which has become so consumed by the need to grab money – and satisfy the TV paymaster. Indeed, when the people who had paid the standard price of £130 for the Sunday action, were locked out of the course before watching not the climax but the third of four days, it was hard to forget the origins of sport's subservience to the god of money and TV profit.

These, in the opinion of some, came in the 1980s when the New York Mets were playing the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. It was pointed out to the TV men that their schedule, which demanded a 5pm start, could just not be met. At that time, the afternoon sun would be shining in the eyes of the batters. Playing at 5pm was impossible.

The reply from the corporate executive lounge was chilling. The only thing impossible was pre-empting the popular Bill Cosby Show. The rest, some might say, was pretty much inevitable.

Kenny may be the only man to restore Liverpool's pride

Roy Hodgson is a good football man with a respectable body of work behind him but he might privately admit now that he has inherited not a job but a nightmare.

It is in this light that he should bear up despite the cries from the Kop for the iconic Kenny Dalglish.

The argument that Hodgson should be given some time to reinvigorate Liverpool remains an honourable position but increasingly it also seems untenable. Cries for Dalglish make a certain kind of sense. He knows Liverpool, the extent of the disasters that unfolded under the reigns of Gérard Houllier and Rafa Benitez – and the shameful neglect of responsibility implicit in the sale of the club to the American owners.

Dalglish's indignation at what has happened to a club to which he contributed so much distinction might just serve as a rallying point. Heaven knows, Liverpool haven't required one so desperately since the time Bill Shankly was summoned.