It was a sentiment I agreed with wholeheartedly and I make no apology for it being the first thing that leapt into mind regarding the IRB.
I mean ... England cheat with rugby balls and get a tap on the wrist with a soggy ant. Alesana Tuilagi, who plays for the impoverished Samoan team, wears a non-sanctioned mouthguard and he/the team get slapped with a $10,000 fine.
The Kipling quote neatly captures the tragedy of the IRB. Just as you think they are managing to marshal world rugby into some sort of shape, they go and pull this stuff.
First, they produce a tournament where minnows like Samoa not only struggle to afford to attend, they stack the deck so the little guys have the hardest schedule.
The justification for this is money, of course.
Revenue generated by the World Cup comes largely from television and that medium does not have the IRB's high-sounding focus on growing the game worldwide.
Their audience and sponsors/advertisers want to see only what the big boys are doing - so the tournament is organised with a built-in prejudice.
There has been hell to pay for that and IRB spokesmen have become increasingly frustrated trying to explain their stance.
But they are on a loser.
Sportspeople have a highly developed sense of inequity and a World Cup without a level playing field is a sorry thing.
Samoa may not quite have captured the imagination in this tournament as they have in others but who knows what they could have done with a schedule that approximated those of their major foes?
Then someone in the IRB's world of public relations must have had a bit of a seizure.
England's kicking coach Dave Alred and conditioning coach Paul Stridgeon were banned from attending last night's match against Scotland at Eden Park (gasp ... the shame!) after a Rugby World Cup Ltd investigation into allegations they had broken the rules during last weekend's victory over Romania by changing balls for two conversions taken by Jonny Wilkinson without requesting permission from referee Romain Poite.
The ball used to score a try must be used for the conversion.
The England kickers felt that one ball - the eight used in Dunedin were all numbered - was better for goalkicking than the others and it was the one handed over by Alred and Stridgeon.
England were warned to stop pulling this stroke.
RWC investigated whether the management pair had been guilty of misconduct but the RFU took immediate action which has ended any chances of the player concerned, Wilkinson, or the team manager, Martin Johnson, being summoned to give evidence in a misconduct hearing.
"They mistakenly thought that there was an issue with some of the match balls used in the England v Romania match," said the RFU in a statement. "Those team management members took it upon themselves to substitute balls during the match in contravention of both the laws and spirit of the game."
So where's the fine?
That would be the minimum, surely, and any sane person can see England should have been punished in a way that hurt them, rather than sending the two coaches off to watch the game in front of TV with a pint of Boddington's. It must have been hell.
Surely this is a far worse offence than the bit of plastic wrapped round Tuilagi's choppers.
He and Samoa, meanwhile, cop it where they can least afford it and that over an offence which made absolutely no difference to Samoa's opponent, Fiji.
The England business looks a grade A cover-up, with all the heavy wallahs of the RFU protecting their brave lads.
We and They indeed.
Be nice to prick that with a fork - and feel free to reconstruct that sentence in any manner you see fit.
In fact, perhaps the best thinking about World Cup structure has actually come out of England - with their unsuccessful bid to run a Tier One World Cup alongside a parallel World Cup for the Tier Two nations.
It makes more sense than strangling the minnows with their own schedule and fining them over mouthguards.
NZRU CEO Steve Tew's empty and specious threat to boycott the next World Cup by withdrawing the All Blacks must have been a blessed relief to the IRB.
It earned him dire criticism but any world sporting body that ignores the justified gripes of one of its senior members needs to think again.
Tew's threat was wrong but you can't blame him for fighting his corner.
New Zealand is struggling to afford to hang on to its players, World Cup year has cost the NZRU $13m and the Northern Hemisphere unions won't revenue-share when the All Blacks tour there - what is Tew supposed to do?
What else does he have to bargain with?
There will be forces in world rugby, with money and backers, wondering if there is room for a breakaway, a Kerry Packer-type outfit which takes the lead in globalising the game with a 'rebel' competition.
It nearly happened when the game went professional in 1996 and there is no reason why it can't happen again.
All it takes is a few too many pricks with a fork and the great sausage of world rugby could burn on its own barbecue.
