Athens maintained their unbeaten run in the Greek championship but their 53-10 win over Attica Springboks in round 8 came at a price.

Amid the passages of flowing, forceful rugby that lit up a sunny  afternoon at Glyka Nera and underlined Athens' claim to be the best side in the country came a series of cheap shots that left their reputation in question.

Three Athens players were shown yellow cards for foul play with Nastas getting a second yellow - it would have been a straight red anyway - for throwing a punch under the nose of the referee shortly before the end.

Attica Springboks, who also picked up two yellow cards, were also guilty at times of going too far with the fists and the boots and both sides need to ask themselves how they intend to forward the game in Greece with performances as ugly and cynical as this one.

The end of the game saw the Athens players ignore the traditional tunnel of handshakes as they huddled in the middle of the field where their coach appeared to give them a verbal working over. He was quick to apologise to Attica Springboks for the way the game was played.

Sadly, the atmosphere on the sidelines was equally ugly - a volley of abuse aimed at the (mainly Athens) players and at the referee Andreas Frangopoulos who, under the circumstances where players are going out their way to make life difficult, had a pretty reasonable afternoon.

The atmosphere was more akin to a football match than rugby.

Athens won the game because they were easily the better side, scoring nine tries in the process. After some tight opening exchanges which left the scores tied at 10-10, Athens ran away with it.

Turning around with a 22-10 lead, they then took the second half 31-0. Attica barely escaped their own half and given the pressure they were under did well to restrict the visitors to another five tries in the second half.

Athens centre Georgos Tsatsaronis scored the opening try after just five minutes before Attica full-back Mike Henderson converted a penalty.

Athens full-back Mike Loizou added the second try before Attica srum-half Cyril Rouzies set up Greece international forward Billy Poulopoulos for a try that Henderson converted.

That made it 10-10 but that was as close as Attica got. Two more tries in the first half from Costas Makrikostas and Philip Sotiriadis gave Athens a useful half-time cushion.

The first half also saw the first batch of yellow cards with Athens' fly-half Grigol Mshvildadze and Nastas both sin-binned. Attica wing Giannis Mastrotheodoros also got his marching orders for kicking an opponent while trying to hoof the ball clear.

Athens immediately took charge of the match when Dimitris Papadatos, returning after injury and slotting comfortably into the outside centre position, powered his way through to touch down close to the posts.

Thereafter, amid the mischief which saw Sotiriasis and Nathanael Courcelle sin-binned and Nastas shown a red card, Athens scored another four tries through Costas Tsampaos, Omiros Fanariotis, Papadatos and Sotiriadis.

Athens have now won all games so far this season and are well on course for a third successive championship title.