Monday, 17th November, 2003 – Rugby (‘Rugger’)

Against my better judgement, I actually found myself close to being excited whilst watching England beat France in the Rugby World Cup semi-final this weekend. With its wilfully obscure rules, stop-start action, and culture of stripping, singing, and matey bearhugs, I’ve long harboured a low-level hatred for the game.

Oscar Wilde famously said that ‘Rugby is a game for barbarians, played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen, played by barbarians’. He less famously (but much more wittily) also said that ‘Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the centre of the city’.

He never said ‘Rugby is a tedious, feeble excuse for a shower of whinnying, melon-headed toffs to put their heads very close to each other’s bums ‘. Why he failed to make this observation is unknown, as that is – to my mind – so very clearly what it is. The sight of Prince Harry (who, amazingly, is taking time out from his gap year to watch the World Cup) celebrating with his horsey, ruddy-cheeked, baseball-capped chums in the stands did little to challenge my prejudices.

But perhaps – just perhaps – my hatred of rugby is partly down to the fact that I was forced to play it at school, and was extremely crap at it. Until I was able to drop it at some point in my fourth year, in favour of sitting in the library during P.E with the other soft lads, every Wednesday afternoon was rugby afternoon, and it was hell from start to finish. From shrinking away in the changing rooms from those other boys who spent the time shouting, spraying themselves with Deep Heat, and slapping each other for motivation, to the agonised walk back to the bus stop at the end, Wednesday afternoons were an ordeal.

It didn’t help that your rugby-playing card was marked from the minute you walked onto the field of play for the first time. If the heavy-browed, scowling P.E staff liked the look of you then you were best mates forever, and could look forward to six years of blokey banter and transparently preferential treatment. If they didn’t like the look of you (or ‘fancy’ you, as they uncomfortably termed it at this particular all-boys school), then you were persona non grata, fit only to be shouted at, taunted, and used as a human tackle bag for the bigger, more able boys.

In my entire competitive rugby-playing career, I was actually in possession of the ball on less than 10 occasions (though, on roughly twice as many, I allowed it to bounce painfully off my frozen, claw-like hands). I was once part of a class ‘B team’ that was so thoroughly trounced in the first period of a match that the sides were mixed up at half time to spare us further humiliation. I have few happy rugby-related memories.

Returning again to the theme of conflicted macho aspirations, my hatred of rugby was partly inspired by the way that it was presented in my school of being the acme of manhood. If you didn’t like it, then you were little more than a lisping, effeminate mummies boy. If you liked it and were good at it, then you had licence to swagger imperiously around the school, safe in the knowledge that your masculinity could not be questioned.

I hated rugby. But no-one wants to be seen as a mummies boy. It was confusing. Part of me was appalled at the notion that shouting, boasting, and wanting to hit people was all there was to being a man, while the other part was desperately frustrated that I couldn’t even meet that measly, reductive criteria.

But now that I am fully grown, have (some) hair on my chest, and once (nearly) had a fight with a (probably) Polish man, I’m happy to relax into a comfortable, self-justifying assumption that men who like rugby are not only jug-eared poshos, but are also closet homosexuals, for whom rugby is nothing more than a socially acceptable safety valve for their sublimated desires. See how, in fighting back against the chauvinism and casual stereotyping of my youth, I become exactly like those who once intimidated me? Funny really, isn’t it?