WELSH rugby is engulfed in a brawl of shame, yet all we get from the governing body is a deafening silence.

There has been one shameful incident after another involving some of the top names in rugby, but there has been no official comment from on high, no condemnation, no code of conduct issued.

The Welsh Rugby Union doesn’t waste an opportunity to bombard us with all manner of public relations material about the significance and importance of what is essentially an exhibition game against the Barbarians on June 4. And it expects us to swallow it all.

But on the burning issue of the day, it has issued no statement of any kind. Surely that is a mistake.

It obviously doesn’t condone a whole series of unsavoury incidents which have dragged the game into disrepute - so why doesn’t the WRU come out and say something?

It’s a bit pot calling the kettle black for former Wales captain Gareth Thomas to have a go at what’s been happening, when he was hardly an angel himself.

The incidents have arrived so thick and fast in recent weeks it’s difficult to keep up with them.

A trio of top names - Bradley Davies, Gavin Henson and Andy Powell - have been involved in alleged bar-room type fights or brawls, ironically in three different countries.

Down in west Wales Davies was arrested after a mass brawl involving around 30 people, in France Henson got involved in a fight, allegedly with teammates from Toulon, resulting in a week-long suspension, and finally in London Andy Powell was also suspended by his club Wasps after a punch-up in a London pub which followed his notorious ‘buggygate’ incident along the M4.

And a few years back Dragons pair Rhys Thomas and Rhodri Davies were locked up for the night in an Italian jail after a late night incident following a game in Treviso.

And so it goes on, the pace, if anything, increasing as rugby descends into a kind of abyss. Not that the episodes are confined solely to Wales for England pair Ben Foden and Delon Armitage have also been in trouble, the former after a row with a taxi driver which led to him being cautioned by police for causing criminal damage and the latter was banned for two months after being found guilty of pushing an anti-doping officer following a London Irish-Bath match.

The game has become far more high profile since it went professional and as such the leading players are expected to be role models. Youngsters look up to them, they seek to emulate them and they look to them to set an example. How crestfallen some of them must be when they see so many of them in trouble.

No one is expecting them to be completely without blemish and live like saints, but at the same time all of this is beyond the pale at a time when the game is under the microscope so heavily with the eyes of the world on them leading up to the World Cup this autumn.

It all seems a throwback to the old amateur days yet at a time when higher standards of professionalism are expected.

Back in the seventies some of what went on would have made your hair curl.

Then it was considered good fun and high jinks at a time when so much of what went on was swept under the carpet.

The greatest Lions team of them all, Willie John McBride’s unbeaten Lions in South Africa in 1974, brought the local fire brigade and police force out in one city.

Hotels were regularly damaged, beds got hurled out of windows, fire extinguishers were turned on in the middle of the night and one player, on a lesser kind of tour, took a horse up flights of stairs and put it in the hotel swimming pool.

But little or none of that ever saw the light of day because rugby then was very much small beer, now it seems to be lots and lots of beer.

You can’t get away with anything these days, you have to be squeaky clean because as sure as heck if you step out of line it’s going to get reported and with people taking pictures on their mobiles it can be a nightmare.

So it’s time for the Welsh Rugby Union and Wales coach Warren Gatland to act - though that can’t be easy when even one of the Wales management team - defence chief Sean Edwards - was suspended for a week during this year’s Six Nations after an alleged incident with another member of staff.

It’s not good enough. Silence in this case is not golden. And while we’re at it, Gatland surely can’t consider Henson or Powell for his World Cup squad now.