Rugby league, you really need to harden up.

Wheeeeeeeee!

Come on. Lighten up. In this depressing old world of death and violence and terrorism and an unfulfilling third season of House of Cards, is there any better comic relief than the Greatest Game of All? What is this wretched world coming to when two former teammates can't playfully greet each other on the field with a discrete penis squeeze at the play-the, er …

Wheeeeeeeee!

Last year, I cheekily wrote Greg Bird weeing on a police car on his wedding weekend in Byron Bay was good for the game.

Of course, Birdy's drunken act was wrong and misguided, but a hanging offence? I'm still receiving Unabomber-like correspondence from readers who missed the point.

"Thank god someone can still have a laugh about the game," texted one Immortal, who is exhausted with the righteous indignation that has grabbed hold of a once-working man's game. A game that once had an ability to laugh at itself.

You have to laugh, Mr Immortal, or you'd cry. With me?

And so, right on cue, fans and officials and anyone else with half an opinion all lined up to bash Sims, wanting head office to throw the book at him for his act of madness at Brookvale Oval on Sunday afternoon.

Thankfully, Big Willie put the whole episode in perspective when asked if he was offended.

"Offended? Please. I think it's hilarious," Mason said. "I hope he doesn't [get charged for the incident] because me and Korbin are really good mates and I think it was unlucky because of the timing of it all. I knew what he was doing. I was talking to him as he was doing it. I didn't even flinch."

Say what you want about Willie, but at least he has some perspective.

Thankfully, no heavy sanction was forthcoming from the match review committee, with Sims issued with warning - officially known as a "concerning act notice"- on Monday afternoon. In other words, don't grab other players on the pee-pee in front of a packed grandstand with a big television audience watching at home on Fox Sports.

Elsewhere, colleague Brad Walter has branded the incident an "embarrassment" to the game. Former referee Greg McCallum was scathing in a Facebook post on Sunday night, but later deleted it. Others wanted $10,000 fines. Bringing the game into disrepute and all that.

Granted, whenever this stuff happens, it goes viral, all around the world.

In the past decade or so, the rest of the planet has read stories about rugby league players pooing in the shoe of a teammate (in Dubbo), probing at the anuses of rival players (during games), and weeing in their own mouths (at Northies).

There were some interesting headlines generated for this one.

"Rugby League Star Randomly Grabs Dude's Junk During Match!" screamed the website Deadspin. So reported SB Nation: "Rugby player grabs opponent's wiener".

Contrary to popular belief and Twitter, junk-grabbing does not hurt the image of the code as much as a spear tackle, grapple or crusher tackle, eye gouge or even the random testicle grab.

On Monday, I asked former Rugby League Week editor Geoff Prenter, who has seen plenty of things in his time, what he thought of the incident.

He laughed it off, and then reminded me of an infamous moment in league history…

"Players love publicity - and this is one way of getting it." No, that was not Dave Smith. It was not Todd Greenberg. It was Kevin Humphreys, quoted on the front page of Rugby League Week on June 26, 1976.

He was referring to a story on that same page under the byline of Tommy Raudonikis, who had taken the dramatic step of admitting he was the "phantom biter" - the man who had allegedly chomped on the nose of Manly rival Johnny Gibbs in a match between Wests and arch rivals Manly.

"I had been gouged in the eye – not by Gibbs - and I had double vision," Raudonikis explained. "In guess in the back of my mind I was determined to get some revenge and do something drastic. I feel sorry for Gibbs."

Alongside the photo was a doctored image of Tom Terrifc with fangs and a black eye mask.

Humphreys didn't believe Raudonikis had really bitten Gibbs - but the league slugged him with a $200 fine anyway. What would've happened in the 1970s if there were such things as dozens of high-definition cameras at matches, endless replays, social media and GIFs, which turn unsavoury incidents into a real-time Benny Hill Show?

It would've given us all something to talk about for a day or so, becoming moving on to the next "concerning act" of the day.

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