It's been quite a weekend for thuggery, north and south of Hadrian's Wall.
In the EPL, Karl Henry was ordered-off after assaulting Jordi Gomez of Wigan and Nigel De Jong continued his fine form from the WC final by hammering Hatem Ben Arfa of Newcastle.
Today we learn that Rangers striker Nikica Jelavic will require ankle surgery after the violent assault on his person by Black of Hearts - a 'tackle' which brought only a yellow card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXDf9XF_ddk
Readers may be interested to note that the same referee twice sent off Kevin Thomson of Rangers for similar, or lesser, challenges.
The Rangers official website summed it up thus: "it is unclear when he will be fit to return to action but will clearly be unavailable in the immediate future."
Yesterday we highlighted the lack of interest and editorial slant at the BBC and some major daily newspapers, who all found no room for this shocking display of brutality.
When the pundits aren't ignoring these attacks they seem closer to condoning them.
Incredibly, in the De Jong case, neither of ESPN's half-time summarisers saw anything wrong with his tackle.
But the mainstream English media, with many ex-refs offering their thoughts, have been quick to slate the individuals involved in such dangerous play.
The more violent of enforcers seem to think that the merest touch of the ball can excuse a challenge where they throw their bodies at their opponents.
In the case of the human flotsam that is Black, the footgage above clearly demonstrates his intent: he meant to kick Jelavic, to bring him down in a cynical and rash manner, all the while knowing there was a good chance he would stay on the pitch.
Referees are forced to book players who take off their shirts while celebrating and encroach over the white line and they cannot but caution players for wasting time at the end of a game. And all that is treated the same as Black's lunge.
Rangers now face the prospect of their main acquisition - the most expensive player in a number of years - facing a lengthy period on the road to recovery (it could be weeks, perhaps months?) and all Black received for his part in that is one yellow card.
There are calls within the game in England - from ex-players, managers, officials and journalists - to reward those who inflict such serious and premeditated violence upon players to face longer bans, and perhaps face being removed for selection for as long as their victim faces the enforced removal of their right to work and to play.
It is nice to see De Jong has been removed from the Netherlands squad, even if it appears little more than tokenism.
The media in Scotland has largely chosen to deny that Jelavic was even fouled, far less put out the game by a cynical hack. How they will choose to spin reports of how he managed to injure himself will be interesting.
Scottish football is filled with players like Black : Dods at Dundee United and Tokely at Inverness are the obvious blood, cartilage and ligament brothers, throwbacks to an era where sanctioned malevolence was all the rage.
Wild tackles are often the source of much gnashing of teeth and grumbling about lengthy bans - Lafferty on Hinkel springs to mind - so when the 'challenge' involved ends in the player on the recieving end needing surgery, as opposed to getting straight back up, perhaps we should be asking if this isn't the moment for those advocates to make their voices a little louder?