UEFA described it as the new disease afflicting football and, by implication, identified Romania's Gheorghe Hagi as one of the worst 'carriers'.

With the visual aid of television, the Referee Committee have diagnosed the malaise here at Euro 2000. And it can manifest itself in one of three ways - players diving, tugging opponents' shirts or pulling at their arms.

'We must react very hard to stop these things in future,' vice-chairman Lars Ake Bjorck told a media conference near Brussels. 'Spectators don't want to see them happening.'

Hagi was shown on video tape to have all the symptoms of the diver, the committee demonstrating as much by rerunning the incident which resulted in his being ordered off in a quarter-final tie against Italy at the weekend.

Remember how the celebrated Romanian captain, booked earlier for a crippling tackle on Antonio Conte, demanded a penalty when Stefano Fiore did no more than touch his arm? Portuguese referee Vitor Manuel Melo Pereira refused to be taken in by his protestations and issued him a second yellow card.

'I make no judgment on the individual,' Ken Ridden, the Englishman on the committee said, 'but trying to deceive a referee is a thing we can't have. This is not sportsmanship.'

The avuncular Ridden actually was quite damning of Hagi for the challenge on Conte who, carried off with ankle ligament damage, can take no further part in the tournament.

'If the referee had been able to identify the tackle as we have done on video, he could have shown a red card,' he said. 'This player was very lucky at that stage to stay on the field.'

But, in their presentation, UEFA concentrated attention on other types of offences, including the commonplace one of players waving imaginary cards in an effort to get rivals booked or sent off.

'This is an area in which referees perhaps have been too tolerant,' Ridden conceded, before adding that action should be taken against the more-insistent offenders.

So what thinks Scotland's Hugh Dallas of this so-called new disease - in particular, the diving in which a whole array of players, Alan Shearer of England among them, have indulged during Euro 2000?

'Referees have become increasingly concerned with simulation,' Dallas, citing the official UEFA term for the misdemeanour, commented. 'It is very difficult to identify, depending on the angle you've got.

'Sometimes contact is made and, in such cases, we have to take into account the degree of exaggeration. But, still, the way to correct it lies with us.

'In saying that, I don't think simulation is a problem back home. Maybe our referees can take a lot of credit for this because they are switched on and ready to stamp on it.

'Then again, maybe this kind of thing just isn't highlighted as much in Scotland as it has been here. You've got to remember that we've been watching 28 games played in a short period of time with up to, say, 25 cameras at each of them.'