Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

Football, not rugby, is now the gentleman’s game

Rugby Union used to be a civilised game but no longer. Now it’s footballers who know how to behave

Most British sports fans are familiar with the maxim that ‘football is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, and rugby union is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen’. It was coined more than half a century ago by Arthur Tedder, then chancellor of Cambridge University, and for decades the saying stood the test of time: George Best and Gareth Edwards, Paul Gascoigne and Gavin Hastings, John Terry and Jonny Wilkinson. I rest my case.

But something strange has happened in the past season or two. This current crop of footballers, particularly the ones wearing England shirts, are polite and presentable. Not only that, but their enthusiasm for their sport is infectious and it says much about their wholesome image that the most the tabloids can reproach them for is the odd indiscreet tattoo. Yet beneath the amiable exterior is a tough inner core, as they showed when they won the penalty shootout against Colombia. ‘I’m proud of the discipline,’ said the England manager Gareth Southgate after Tuesday night’s victory. ‘We kept our composure in a really difficult environment… and in a big game, that was impressive from a young group of players.’

In contrast, the England rugby squad are a sullen and joyless bunch. During the recent tour to South Africa, two of their number were involved in what the BBC described as a ‘post-match confrontation’ with fans after losing the second Test match, while Ben Youngs — one of the most experienced members of the squad — stormed away in a sulk from a live television interview after one question. Two of this season’s squad have been convicted of drink-driving and the captain, Dylan Hartley, the man supposed to lead by example, has been banned for a total of 60 weeks in the course of his career for biting, punching, eye-gouging, verbally abusing a referee, elbowing and headbutting.

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