The charges faced by London Welsh relate to the registration last summer of scrum-half Tyson Keats, a 31-year-old New Zealander who joined the promoted club from now-defunct Italian side Aironi.
Former team manager Mike Scott was charged separately over an allegation he misled the RFU, incorrectly registering the player as English. A date for Scott's hearing has yet to be set.
The Exiles are expected to argue in mitigation that they uncovered the maladministration following an internal investigation and brought the matter to the RFU.
That did not wash with Rowe, who said: "We got caned for it, so I've got no sympathy for them. We got done and probably rightly so, because the rules are there.
"When you're in a professional business, which it is, you can't really have a slap on the wrist and people saying, 'Don't be a naughty boy', or, 'Don't do it again'. Otherwise, everybody tomorrow would say 'Sorry, it was just an administrative cock-up, we didn't mean to do it'."
Rowe acknowledged it would be "farcical" if London Welsh were docked 18 points – two for each match played by Keats – but said he expected them to lose "a lot".
He added: "People make mistakes but the reality is you can't expect to get away with it, can't expect to say 'Don't dock us any points because we're really sorry'. If you've made a mistake, you've made a mistake. If the rules say they must do this then they must do it. As we discovered, it's tough at the top."
Diamond was more diplomatic, insisting he did not know enough of the "detail" of the case to pass judgment on what sanction should be imposed.
He added: "Honest mistakes do happen and dishonest mistakes happen. It depends what the panel finds and they'll deal with it in due course, no doubt. In reality, there's a huge knock-on effect, isn't there, if you play ineligible players in games?
"If it's an administrative error then fair play but if it's deliberate then it's totally different and the sanctions will no doubt take that into consideration."
London Irish are just two points better off than London Welsh and while director of rugby Brian Smith said he had an opinion on the matter, he insisted it would be wrong to comment without being in full possession of the facts.
London Welsh, meanwhile, went into lockdown on Wednesday, gagging head coach Lyn Jones and his players from discussing anything relating to the case.
Chief executive Tony Copsey refused to add to his promise on Tuesday to cooperate fully with the RFU, while Jones was guarded in the extreme when previewing the club's Premiership game with Saracens on Sunday.
Asked how his players were feeling, he said: "They're fine, everybody's fine." He insisted the squad were "very much" focused on their jobs and revealed Keats, who is not thought to be linked in any way to the charges, was "fine" mentally.
But Jones betrayed his fears over the sanction that could be imposed on the club when revealing he was currently targeting two more wins for survival. He added: "I can't see f------ more than two!"
That gallows humour extended to hooker Neil Briggs, who joked about the charges hanging over the club: "We're all on death row, slitting our wrists."
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