It was an image of post-match forgiveness and contrition entirely in keeping with rugby union’s traditions, yet Marler could not resist adding the hashtag 1-0.
That could, at a stretch, have been interpreted as 1-0 to Harlequins after their win at Wasps, but more likely it referred to Marler’s personal victory in winding up Haskell sufficiently by squirting a water bottle in his face that the flanker’s reaction saw him sent to the sin-bin.
Grabbing Marler by the throat with both hands brought a yellow card for Haskell in the climax to a squabble that had started with a wrestling and scrum-cap grabbing contest. It was an instinctive reaction to a calculated attempt to get under his skin.
Haskell was not the instigator yet it was the Wasp that was punished, a chain of events which had his director of rugby Dai Young questioning whether rugby has its priorities right.
“There comes a time when you’ve got to look at the guys that spark these things up, not somebody that’s going to take exception to someone ripping their hat off and squirting water in their face,” said Young.
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His exasperation was echoed by Haskell and Marler’s Lions team-mate Ross Moriarty, who had his say on Twitter.
“How has Haskell been sin-binned? What a disgrace. Rugby is embarrassing right now. Well done ref.” Moriarty then added: “If people can retaliate maybe it will stop the silly stuff in the first place.”
Moriarty’s Law would be interesting if applied across the game but imagine the consequences. The rugby field would become the wild west.
One of the game’s most spectacular plot losses came from Argentina prop Federico Mendez when he reduced England second row Paul Ackford to the consistency of a raspberry jelly with one wild haymaker at Twickenham in 1990.
Mendez was inevitably sent off but the England player who triggered the explosion by kicking the teenage Puma, Jeff Probyn, escaped scot free.
If the vigilante approach was in place, while Ackford would still have been helped off on two strands of spaghetti, it would have been Probyn who would have been dismissed and Mendez would have been allowed to play on.
Rugby is a game of constant provocation. There are instances of shirt tugging, line blocking and holding in at rucks in every game yet these rarely, if ever, spark violence.
It is a game built on iron discipline. Controlling frustration is one of its principal requirements.
There were three extraneous factors at play in the Haskell incident. It was his first game in three months and he was revved up to make an impression; Marler is a close friend and he wanted to get one over on him; the water in the face was a surprise tactic which threw him off kilter.
Rugby players deal with physical confrontation all the time so it tends to be water off a duck’s back, verbal sparring is also – unfortunately – part and parcel of the professional game, but playground prods they are not prepared for.
While Haskell would almost certainly have retained tunnel vision had Marler smeared a forearm across his face on the floor or questioned his hairline, the water squirt was a brain scrambler.
If the fracas at the Ricoh Arena had a touch of the circus about it, Marler was the ringmaster and Haskell made to look the clown.
It was snide, it was sneaky but most of all it was successful. 1-0 to Marler. Next time James, just turn the other cheek. Then catch him with a custard pie at England training next week.