Louisa Wall: Tipoki's suspension way over the top

New Zealand swimming has had a very full and extremely successful season with the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, the world short course championships in China and the national championships.

Coach Jan Cameron shows tremendous enthusiasm for her work which requires never-ending preparation and constant evaluation.

She has talked a lot about controlling the environmental variables, such as making sure they take their own cereal to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games because the food available in Shanghai was inadequate.

She also talked about the build-up to Beijing being at a place like Perth, which is in the same time-zone and where they won't have to worry about essentials such as water and clean air.

Cameron has immense pride in her swimmers. Moss Burmester, Helen Norfolk and Dean Kent received praise for their internationally competitive swim times at the national championships given the temptation to ease off and take it easy given the nature of the competition.

Cameron is definitely taking our swim potential somewhere which is great for a country that loves its sporting winners.

I wonder what she would make of the much publicised sporting incident over the weekend involving Rua Tipoki.

Finally, it seemed the Blues had their best team on the park and now unfortunately, they have to play the rest of the season without a player who had consolidated in their troubled mid-field.

Tipoki's performance reminded us all of his attacking powers, but the injury to Western Force's James Hilgendorf also reminded the judiciary of his previous misdemeanours.

The 16-week suspension Tipoki received was over the top. It is easy to make an example of such a guy - originally from the sticks, brown and with two previous charges.

But, why does the little guy always have to get so squashed in the process of making everyone take a good hard look at their actions on the field?

Views from rugby nuts have been interesting. Some have stated that it was intentional.

But to suggest that Tipoki intentionally meant to crack the guy's eye-socket is ludicrous. This was not a situation analogous to drink-driving - it was always going to happen and to punish this young bloke to this extent is not justice.

I don't concur with the thinking of Murray Mexted and Stu Wilson, who made several comments during the match about rugby officials making the players play soft when they are penalised for such trivial offences.

But, I do think that in this instance no benefit was given, no chances were accorded and the heavy hand of justice has come down on Tipoki and ultimately the Blues and New Zealand rugby.

Maybe he has too much aggression for rugby but he is such a talent that maybe where he should be looking is to league, a real hard man's game.

Too hard for rugby is probably just right for league so I hope Tipoki is not despairing but thinking hard about where he might fit in the professional sporting context.

He still has much to offer New Zealand rugby. Let's hope Tipoki has made that apology to Hilgendorf, who we all hope has not suffered too much.

Then Tipoki can forgive himself and get working on making himself a better player.