Sven Cronk knows how it feels to be poked in the eye as the innocent victim of a gouging offence like no other during 20 years of European rugby. “Horrendous,’’ he said, breaking almost two decades of silence over what happened in the last scrum of Pontypridd’s Heineken Cup win over Colomiers on the last Friday of November 1999. “A hand came across my face and into my right eye. It was pretty gruesome.’’
The hand belonged to one Richard Nones. Despite no video evidence, a disciplinary tribunal returned a guilty verdict against the Frenchman late tha...