I hate rugby. It's just 80 minutes of controlled violence, played by two packs of lumbering beefcake. It's 30 overgrown men charging up and down a muddy pitch while the opposing team repeatedly attempt to grab their legs. It's an excuse to kick the hell out of other people and not get arrested for it. It's a direct route to casualty, played only by those who haven't been suspended due to serious injury. It's organised sadism. It's played by men whose oversized bodies contravene government obesity guidelines. It's a lot of running around with a strangely shaped ball which can only be thrown backwards. It's an over-complicated mass of perverse rules coupled with a non-intuitive scoring system. It's not football, is it?
I've always hated rugby. I probably didn't realise it existed before I was 11, because my enlightened primary school played (proper) football instead. OK, so I may have been rubbish at playing that too, but at least my life wasn't in danger every time I had a PE lesson. My secondary school, alas, believed that rugger was the one true sport. I spent every winter for five years freezing to death in a stripy jersey while boys who'd already hit puberty wrestled with each other in muddy puddles. I spent every match trying hard to keep out of the way, in case the ball might accidentally be thrown in my direction and a horde of lumbering animals launch themselves on top of me. I cowered every time I was selected for the scrum in case some crucial body part of mine be squashed or wrenched off in the grunting mêlée. And I scored a try only once, when my sadistic PE teacher noticed me standing beside the touch line and threw me the ball, no doubt expecting me to fumble it and then be crushed in a pile of adolescent limbs. He was disappointed, but only on this one single miserable occasion.
I still hate rugby. It's taken far too seriously by too many men, especially those with a middle class background. Some still play the amateur game at weekends, risking ligament injury and cauliflower ear, then drinking to excess after every match whilst singing raucous misogynistic songs. Most rugby fans are too mature, or too unfit, to play properly (often as a result of the drinking) and so have moved on to spectating. They wear oversized replica jerseys and drone on and on about scrummage tactics and Wilko's right foot, as if the rest of us care. Some even pay good money and travel business class to stand in corporate boxes at international matches, presumably as an excuse to get away from the wife for a few glorious pissed-up weekends every year. No thanks, not for me.
I have nothing against people who play rugby. Just don't expect me to be interested in your pointless violent sport. And I have nothing against people who watch rugby either. Just don't expect me to join you in the pub tonight, cheering on "our lads" as they battle against the mighty Springboks. I really couldn't give a damn who wins - life's less disappointing that way. There's only one World Cup, and that's not happening again until 2010. Good luck to England tonight, if it really matters, but I shan't be watching. I am not converted.
