The Brits have climbed on to their high horse again, looking disdainfully down on the perceived misdeeds of the large number of foreigners who now play in the English Premier League.

Here we have Alan Stubbs, the Everton defender, sounding off at what he sees as trickery by foreign players: They exaggerate their reaction to tackles, they roll over, then they wave imaginary cards at the referee, trying to get the tackler cautioned or sent off.

“It is a foreign thing that has crept into our game lately,” Stubbs said. The Brits never do this, it seems. “Ask any British player, and it’s the last thing they want to see …It’s hard enough staying on the pitch at times without people going round trying to get you sent off for trivial things. It’s not a ‘man’ thing.”

Objection: It’s not “hard enough” to stay on the field, if you play by the rules. The problem for Stubbs and the many Brit defenders of his ilk who populate the EPL is that they play, quite deliberately and methodically, at the very limits of legality. Theirs is a physical game … a man’s game.

A dirty game? Not really. Such defenders see themselves as legitimately using the physical contact that the sport allows – and, it needs to be said, the intimidation that goes with it.

There’s quite a list of complimentary adjectives to describe this sort of play: manly, of course, for a start – plus competitive, rugged, hard-nosed, uncompromising, no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, and so on.

The physical approach, in other words, is approved. Players who are fouled, or dangerously tackled, should not react, but should get up and get on with the game. Verbal abuse? That’s all part of the game too, according to Gordon Strachan, the fiery Scot who coaches Glasgow Celtic.

“If you don’t want to play a man’s game, then go play with the kids,” Strachan said last week.

That has been the traditional image of the British game: hard but fair. But that idyllic aura of unalloyed sportsmanship is apparently fading, and many, including Stubbs, blame the foreigners. Even Sir Bobby Charlton, a saintly figure in English soccer known for his gentlemanly conduct on the field, took a xenophobic swipe recently, criticizing players who surround the referee to dispute a call: “I used to think it was just a South American trait,” he said.

The accusation that only foreign players cheat or play dirty is obviously offensive. I would counter it by recalling images of a berserk Roy Keane (Irish though he may be) leading his Manchester United teammates in a furious and famous case of referee harassment in September 1999; of Michael Owen’s highly questionable fall to give England a game-winning penalty kick against Argentina in the 2002 World Cup; and of Lee Bowyer trampling on the head of Malaga’s midfielder Gerardo in 2003.

In short, the Brits have no claim to righteousness. There is truth on both sides of this argument. Foreign players do seem to be more prone to theatrics than the British, but there is a justifiable reason for this: They are not used to the frequent fouling that they encounter, and that British referees permit.

A clash of styles, then, with the Brits adopting the attitude that this is, after all, an English league, and that therefore the foreigners should learn to live with the rough stuff.

Stubbs talks about players “trying to get you sent off for trivial things.” During a match between Liverpool and Everton over the weekend, Stubbs was apparently infuriated because Liverpool’s Spanish forward, Luis Garcia, waved an imaginary card at referee Phil Dowd after Stubbs’s defensive partner, Scotland’s David Weir, had hammered Mohamed Sissoko. On the face of it a ridiculous complaint, because Weir’s foul was crude, dangerous, and obvious – certainly not in any way “trivial.” Dowd surely needed no reminder from Garcia before issuing a card to Weir – a yellow card caution, it needs to be noted, not a red card ejection.

Maybe Garcia’s gesture did have an effect, for one could argue that Weir was unlucky to be carded, because his was the sort of tackle that British defenders are used to making, and are used to getting away with. At times the behavior of British defenders shows an almost laughable disregard for the rules. One week earlier, Weir had been caught in a revealing television replay which showed him with his right arm holding Aston Villa’s Swedish player Olof Mellberg in a solid headlock – a flagrant foul that was ignored by the referee.

An even more classic example occurred that weekend during Chelsea’s 1-0 defeat at Fulham when Chelsea’s John Terry flung himself into a thoroughly reckless, ill-timed tackle on German defender Moritz Volz. Terry made no contact with the ball … and minimal contact with Volz. But that was only because Volz had leaped into the air to avoid Terry’s lunge. Volz inevitably lost control of the ball and fell to the ground.

The referee allowed play to continue. Mission accomplished for Terry, who had broken up a dangerous Fulham attack and escaped punishment. Yet Terry should surely have been penalized for a reckless challenge in which he failed to play the ball.

Stubbs’s complaint, though, cannot be dismissed: It is not acceptable for players to cheat by trying to get opponents ejected. But Stubbs ignores the counter-argument that English defenders – himself being a good example – are also cheating because they simply do not play by the rules. For decades – one might even say forever – the British game and British referees have permitted crude tackling, to the point where the average British defender is not very good at tackling. But why bother when the fouls go unpunished? This becomes a problem for British defenders when they play internationally at club- or national-team level with non-British referees.

But where to begin a cleanup? A clampdown on “foreign cheats” is the most likely response from the English authorities. It won’t be worded like that, of course, but that is what it will be. But I fear any attempt to counter rustic British defending will be resisted as a move that would denature the full-blooded British game, that would undermine what can still – though with increasing difficulty – be seen as the laudable “hard-but-fair” essence of the manly British game.

pgardner@nysun.com