Johnson: They'll cope without me

When Johnson goes to Twickenham next week with two of the club's most celebrated Lions, team manager Dean Richards and chief executive Peter Wheeler, it can be presumed that Leicester will mount a vigorous defence to the charge that their man kneed Sarries' fly half Duncan MacRae in the ribs, an offence which carries a maximum four-week penalty under international rules.

'We'll go down and say our piece,' Johnson said. 'It's difficult for me to say anything before the hearing. You worry about it because you don't want to let the team, or the club, down. If you're not available, for any reason, you feel you're letting people down.'

His employers have made no secret of their dismay at Saracens for citing Johnson in the first place. Matt Poole, Johnson's erstwhile second row partner now starring as master of ceremonies at Welford Road, put it fairly bluntly: 'Thanks to Saracens, make the most of him. He might not be around much longer.'

That, of course, is not the point. With a respected a figure like Sarries' chief executive Francois Pienaar initiating proceedings there is clearly a case to answer and it is not his fault that the RFU has failed to put the citing procedure in the hands of an independent commissioner.

What's more, the citing law is so badly flawed that Johnson must be wishing privately that referee Chris Rees, had seen the MacRae incident. Had that been the case, Johnson would probably have been given nothing more than 10 minutes in the sin-bin at worst, a finger-wagging at best and Saracens could not therefore have taken action on the basis that the referee had not seen it.

'There must be a better process in the professional game for dealing with such matters,' Leicester chairman Peter Tom said.

'Leicester will always punish and then support any of our players who transgress. We've never cited opponents for incidents unseen by the officials, preferring and expecting clubs to deal with such matters by an internal disciplinary process. Numerous incidents occurred in the match and we've identified at least 10 occasions when Saracens' players could have been cited.'

Leicester have never been quick to condemn any of their players publicly, including Neil Back for pushing referee Steve Lander over at the end of the 1996 Cup Final, but the golden rule that the dirty linen must always be washed in private is an essential part of their culture. Professionalism demands accountability, on the field as much as in the boardroom.

Mercifully, perhaps even miraculously, Leicester and Bath still had a full complement of players on the field by the time they finished slugging it out. In coming from behind to win 27-19, the leaders stretched themselves 13 points clear of Bath, shoving the once perennial champions into the bottom half of the table.

They, of course, will demand swift retribution during the return match, fittingly enough on Boxing Day, when the referee ought to be braced for the type of pre-emptive strike which Robin Goodliffe chose not to take at Welford Road. The Sheffield referee bent over backwards to keep everyone on the field when the foul mood of both teams demanded a short, sharp lesson from an early binning, as opposed to an early bath.

In the end he only sent Austin Healey there, rightly so for a professional foul, while the Bath player responsible for a potentially far more serious offence, tipping an airborne Martin Johnson over in the line-out, got away with it.

Moments later, the bad blood produced what threatened to be the mis-match of the season, Gareth Cooper squaring up to Johnson, Bath's Welsh scrum half apparently willing to sacrifice a foot in height and almost seven stone in weight. Cooper, according to Bath coach Jon Hall, claimed Johnson punched him; Johnson denied anything of the kind.

Bath, of course, denied that they had gone out to provoke Leicester, well, no more than usual in matches between them. Two points ahead at half-time, their set-pieces subsided thereafter to such an extent that Tim Stimpson could miss three penalties and still come up trumps.