Another week, another ‘cheat’ scandal. Those dirty, cheating foreigners eh? England will be the shining light of honesty at next year’s World Cup while all others go all ‘Play-Do’ – legged around us. In actual fact we’re just as bad as the rest of them. Our homegrown talent is just as prone to falling over as the boys on the continent and there were two incidents this week that deserve scrutiny.

First, there is Wayne “I’ve never intentionally dived” Rooney. His embarrassing tumble against Aston Villa was bad enough, but had he just got up, brushed himself down and got on with the game one might have assumed, reasonably, that he had merely lost his balance while running at pace. What is worrying is that as soon as he hit the floor his raging face was appealing for a penalty when he knew himself no foul had been committed. So there we have it. Rooney is a hypocrite plain and simple. One moment he is saying he doesn’t dive, and the next he is contradicting himself. To be fair he is not the only darling of the English media to go down a bit too easily. Steven Gerrard has been found to dive under no contact despite previously saying he ‘despises’ people who con the referee.

What upsets me more though is the lack of scrutiny our homegrown players are given when they go to ground. If England wants to be the country that preaches fairness to the world, we need to start making examples of these players.

Take two incidents of foreign players diving this season; Ngog for Liverpool and Eduardo for Arsenal. They were attacked from all sides and rightly criticised. But compare that to the reaction, particularly on programmes like Match of the Day, to Rooney’s dive against Aston Villa at the weekend. It barely got a mention from the two Alans; Shearer and Hansen. Could this be because Rooney is the player who can lead England to glory in South Africa? Is the BBC worried little Wayne won’t talk to them if they criticise him too much?

Of the ten players in the Premier League who have been booked for diving this season, seven of them have been British. That is a fact we have to face up to and deal with if we want to project our league as the ‘best in the world’.

One group of men who can help is the referees, and to be fair, they are doing a good job. They need to have the guts to punish players with a yellow card if we are to tackle the problem successfully. Rooney, of course, was rightly booked and made little fuss afterwards, probably knowing that any further argument would invite further ridicule.

There will be casualties along the way unfortunately. Craig Bellamy was very unlucky to receive a second yellow card for diving against Bolton. But although referee Mark Clattenburg’s decision was wrong, he was right to punish Bellamy in the way he did if he was convinced in his own mind that it was a dive. If the odd mistake among a flurry of bookings for diving is what it takes to get players to stay on their feet, then so be it.