Rucking in the Olive Branch

The Olive Branch at Clipsham has an enviable reputation, and deservedly so. I rang in August to enquire after a table for Christmas lunch and apologised for doing so prematurely. Not all sir, but I’m afraid we’re already full for Christmas Day, came the glad reply.

The décor is delightful, clean and modern yet retains all the traditional charms of an ancient inn. They also conform to my exacting requirement for a pub to be a pub before it has pretensions to world class cuisine. The array of local and European craft beers drew me to the bar…’hmmmmm…Belgium beer….’ murmured my inner Homer Simpson. ‘You’re sipping remember!’ hissed the wife. Ah yes, sipping, my attempts to demur to medical advice on the detrimental combination of cardiac medication and an ocean of weekend alcohol.

I think I may have resolved the Quantum Theory of Sipping. On the surface, just drink more slowly. Yet at a deeper level some mechanism is at work to ensure that, just as time passes more quickly or slowly relative to one’s speed of movement through the universe, so ‘glassy emptiness’ follows similar rules of relativity. Be it a shot of single malt, a 250mm measure of wine, or a pint of beer, the universal speed of drinking changes relative to the volume imbibed. The universe wants a drink finished in 15.784 minutes, regardless of the quantity of liquid involved. This necessitates measured sipping when faced with a peaty west-coast malt, but positive gulping when challenged with a pint of Jakehead IPA. Fortunately for the chambers of my long-suffering heart, there is another force in the universe which is able to overcome the quantum mechanics of sipping, namely my wife’s right hook. So I sigh dolefully and order a last pint of Hoegaarden. Would you like a slice of lime with that sir? Really? I’ve never been asked that. It’s what the Belgians do sir. Well in that case, when in Bruges etc…

Ear-wigging on the next table, I hear the man in the too-tight Leicester Tigers top turn from his second favourite subject, the cornering ability of successive incarnations of the Audi A6, to his absolute favourite, his detestation of football and the potential ruination of civilisation if the game is allowed to continue. Perhaps I was just youthfully oblivious, but as a kid I don’t remember there being a problem with being a football fan whilst enjoying rugby union, or rather I don’t remember die-hard rugby fans having a particular problem with football.

Nowadays, the battle-lines have hardened. Not since the manly Ancient Greeks ridiculed the effeminacy of the Persians has there been such a clash of cultures. Football, or in the various nomenclature of Mr Tigers on the next table,

‘Gay-Ball’, ‘Wendy-Ball’, or ‘Kev-Ball’, was nothing other than 90 minutes of girly cheating, diving, referee-abusing, youth-corrupting, society-destroying scum-bag subversion. Football, he continued, ought to be banned, bloody banned I tell you, from every right-thinking educational establishment in the land. It was no good trying to educate children either, because I blame their bloody parents, they’re even worse, screaming from the sidelines, it’s a damned national disgrace. In addition to repeated acts of alleged thuggery, one of his main complaints was the beauty routines of professional players, scared to get bloody well stuck in, in case they damaged their nails or hair-do.

Apparently then, Schrodinger’s Footballer simultaneously combines acts of violent assault with an aversion to physical contact.

Accusations of thuggery seem ironic when England’s current captain, Dylan Hartley, has such a woeful disciplinary record. Hartley has accumulated sixty weeks of bans since 2007, over a year of ban-time. Hartley’s offences include head-butting, eye-gouging, punching, biting, elbowing…and for rugby fans, the cardinal sin…abusing a referee! The latter is unfortunately on the rise even at grass roots level.

Had a top footballer, indeed any sportsperson, clocked up Hartley’s record, one can only imagine (rightly so) the vitriolic reaction. Yet, the English RFU and England coach Eddie Jones, support Hartley’s continuing captaincy. Is this the kind of ‘bad example’ to which Mr Tigers refers?

Having experienced many years of youth football, any club with which I have been involved, has always taken very prompt action against abuse of officials and dealt firmly with abusive parents. Like any stereotyping, these things happen, but not in the ubiquitous way in which Mr Tigers suggests. And rugby has its own challenges, plenty of gouging, biting, punching at the bottom of the ruck, parental over-enthusiasm, and an on-going and largely unacknowledged problem of steroid abuse - a growing problem at youth level also, with the pressure to be physically big to make it as a pro.

And using the kind of class-based, sexist and homophobic language illustrated by Mr Tigers, is to imply that rugby fans are predominantly from a uniquely all-male, aggressively heterosexual middle-class enclave…like a 1950s public school...oh, hang on a minute…

Trying to discuss these issues with a football-hater of my acquaintance, I suggested that until rugby could interest the kids from the local estate in the same way as it fostered support from the local grammar school, rugby would struggle to compete with more popular sports. He replied, we don’t want those people in our game! A BBC report during the last rugby World Cup revealed that, whilst 94% of top league footballers attended state schools, for rugby the figure was just 39%. The England rugby team at the last World Cup contained 20 of 31 players educated privately, double the proportion in 2003, when England so brilliantly won the tournament. Ofsted reported in 2014, that 61% of Premiership rugby players were educated privately, against just 7% of the general population. Top level rugby seems to draw from the same pool as the Tory cabinet, a fact which Mr Tigers et al seem to enjoy.

The numbers are not as damning as they might sound, because many state schools are simply unable to offer rugby as part of the awful reduction in school sport generally. Private schools not only have a tradition of rugby, but the money to continue it, and good luck to them. Yet, a particular type of rugby fan seems intent in maintaining rugby’s image as for ‘posh boys’ only, and I mean boys rather than girls. Not something which is likely to encourage take-up of the sport in hard-pressed state schools.

By setting themselves up as so vehemently anti-football in such prejudiced terms, the type of rugby fan represented by Mr Tigers is systematically distancing huge numbers of football-loving kids from ever wanting to have any involvement in rugby union, either as players or fans. Can rugby afford to be so alienating? Top referee Nigel Owens has highlighted this growing problem in the game. Rugby was recently praised for its attempt to address homophobia in the game, ahead of other sports, so it’s a shame to have that spoiled by a minority of football-hating rugby fans.

The problem of sexism in the game is equally one which many are trying to address, so it’s equally frustrating to hear those efforts countered by the likes of Mr Tigers.

After the first half of an international fixture last year, a frustrated John Inverdale turned to a retired legend of the game, Francois Pienaar, and asked ‘was that really entertainment?’ ‘Not really, no,’ replied Pienaar, ‘it’s something we have a problem with at the moment.’ Rule changes, endless opaque penalty decisions, lots of seemingly pointless scrabbling about on the ground all mean a struggle to gain new fans, and the sheer size of players has detracted from the running, jinking game of the past which was so entertaining. One would think that rugby fans had much to be concerned with other than someone else’s sport.

As great an event as it is, and although improving in this respect, the Rugby World Cup still has a minority of world class teams mixed with less competitive nations. A typical World Cup group has South Africa and Australia playing a recently discovered Amazonian village, the island of Rockall, and the International Space Station. Perhaps expanding opportunities to attract a broader playing and fan-base might be a good idea, rather than alienating the huge numbers of football-loving youth around the world? That is, unless rugby wants to be relegated to a 30-minute highlight package at 2am after the Dutch 3rd division handball. Where was the mainstream coverage of last year’s England tour to Australia, on which England did so well? Is my friend Mr Tigers really the fan that the game wants, parents want, that the sponsors want, that TV audiences want, that inspires the next generation? Rugby is a great game, it deserves better. Think on Mr Tigers.

And what’s with rugby’s bonding and hazing activities involving getting naked and imbibing each other’s body fluids? That’s just weird!

Alternatively, watch Rugby League…now there’s a game!