Monday 1st December, 2003 – Rugby (‘Rugger’) Again

I am now strong enough to admit - subsequent to my confession couple of weeks back, that I actually enjoyed England’s Rugby World Cup semi-final victory over France (before falling back on a well-used set of toffs-and-repressed-homosexuality stereotypes) - that not only did I enjoy England’s victory against Australia in the final, I actually punched the air with joy and collapsed into a fit of celebratory giggles when Jonny Wilkinson’s last-minute drop goal sailed between the posts.

I am happy to admit this because I have now lapsed back into my natural position of loathing rugby, with whatever pure, visceral sporting thrill inspired by the amazing culmination of the World Cup Final itself, extinguished by the relentless quest of the media to contextualise and comodify the moment, and the ceaseless quacking of those self-same upper-middle class boobs who made me hate the sport so much in the first place.

Even before the winner’s medal had been placed around Wilkinson’s neck, a commentator had dubbed him ‘Goldenboots’, and was wondering aloud if he would ultimately replace ‘Goldenballs’ David Beckham as England’s No. 1 sporting icon. The next day a tabloid featured a series of photos in which Beckham morphed into Wilkinson, and the back pages were full of news about his projected earnings for the next year, and about his beautiful model/actress girlfriend, who was set to take her place as the fairer half of the ‘new Posh and Becks’. Ugghhh.

Plus, the debate was soon raging about whether this was ‘the new 1966’: would future generations remember this triumph with the same sepia-tinted, Ronnie Kray-loving, hang-out-the-bunting, they-didn’t-like-it-up-‘em, sense of hopeless nostalgia as we do the World Cup winning footballers of yesteryear? Quite clearly the answer is NO NO NO NO NO NO and NO, but this didn’t stop broadsheets and tabloids alike devoting many many column inches to many many spurious arguments, shot through with many many different varieties of odious class snobbery (this last section is meant to be read in the style of Police Academy’s Commandant Lassard).

And this is my main reason for reverting back to my comfortable ‘I hate rugby’ default position. While, after England’s semi-final win over France, I was willing to acknowledge that my kneejerk hatred of rugby might just be a factor of my complete uselessness at it at school, and how much I resented those kids who were good, I would now like to contend that all of this is completely besides the point, and that rugby is indeed nothing more than a tedious, over-complicated anachronism, done by men in Chinos for men in Chinos.

Never has the Oscar Wilde quote about ‘Barbarians’ and ‘Gentlemen’ rung truer. Why is Rugby still seen as being the gentleman’s sport? Judged simply by the on-pitch action, you would have to conclude that rugby is a game for thick-skulled, blood-crazed Neanderthals. Any football match that featured the degree of punching, stamping and gouging that a typical rugby match involves would be abandoned before you could say ‘handbags at 10 paces’. Yet, the constant fisticuffs and casual, eye-watering brutality (that serves only to further punctuate a game that doesn’t so much flow as tumble raggedly towards its conclusion) are greeted by the commentators with little more than an indulgent chuckle, and a light-hearted anecdote about the time that ‘Bulldog’ Will Skinner once had one of his testicles bitten off by an opponent, but how they still had a foaming pint of ale together in the bar afterwards, the best of friends.

Given the quite brainless aggression exhibited on the field of play, once can only conclude that rugby retains it’s status as the sport of gentlemen for non-sporting reasons. Clearly, the sight of two Surrey-born landowners’ sons beating seven shades of shit out of each other on a rugby pitch is an exhilarating celebration of man’s courageous physicality, while the sight of two taxi-drivers’ sons doing the same on a football pitch is an ugly, damning indictment of the youth of the day.

It was recently put to me that, perhaps rugby is seen as being ‘the gentleman’s game’, not because of the conduct of the players, but because of the way the supporters comport themselves. I was told by an acquaintance that, having experienced the overall atmosphere of watching the Rugby World Cup on TV over here, she can’t bring herself to go back to watching England play football in pubs, which she sees as being necessarily an aggressive, chauvinistic experience. Indeed, she told me of how, when watching a club rugby match, she was impressed that supporters clapped the opposition when they scored, and that she had second and third favourite teams that she would have supported had England been knocked out of the World Cup early.

If this is how ‘gentlemen’ support their teams, they can take the sport. What a passionless, vanilla experience that sounds like. Clapping the opposition?!! How very English…

But why this bogus idea that there are only two ways to support your team? Either by applauding genteelly as your boys are ground into the dirt, or by being one of those hideous, fist-pumping, hooting oafs who end up throwing bins through kebab shop windows when Turkey scrape a draw in the football. Like the man Blair said, there is a third way. You can support your club team zealously without hating the opposition; you can support your national team passionately without being xenophobic. Shit, you can support them without even being particularly patriotic (I cheer hard for England at football, but feel embarrassed when the national anthem comes on).

But, the rugby lovers would have you believe that you have to be either one or the other, using the classic snob position of defining everything other by its worst exponents, and everything of theirs by their best.

Not all football fans are scum. And – if I’m being honest – not all rugby fans are horsey, tea-sipping Hugos. But, if the media, and rugby fans alike, insist on pitting one against the other, I know what side of the fence I will be on. Even if it does mean I will have to be on the same side as David Baddiel.