‘Rugby is almost wholly devoid of skill’

The morning after England’s Rugby World Cup triumph over Australia four years ago I walked down my local high street and saw two boys doing something which deeply disturbed me.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Jonny.
Jonny who?

The morning after England’s Rugby World Cup triumph over Australia four years ago I walked down my local high street and saw two boys doing something which deeply disturbed me. I knew these kids and had always thought them normal, well-adjusted, cheerful youngsters. And now, here they were, in the street, throwing an oval ball to one another. Running and throwing an oval ball to one another. Never seen them do that before. I felt physically sick.

They had been gripped, briefly, by the same temporary affliction which I and much of the rest of the country had succumbed to over the previous two weeks: we had all become rugby fans. And experts. I remember standing at the bar of my local holding forth on the merits of the ‘rolling maul’. I didn’t know what in hell a ‘rolling maul’ was, but I was aware that a) England’s rugby team did it and b) the Aussies were whingeing about it and that was good enough for me. Like those two boys, I was mindlessly behind our lads, although never to the extent that I was tempted to sing the hideous ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’. Starved of sporting success, we all pinned our pennants on the national rugby team to claim some sort of glory, or the sort of limited glory one might accrue from beating a bunch of Antipodeans, a handful of Samoans, a few remaining white South Africans, the Welsh and 18 people from Georgia. The word ‘world’ in relation to the Rugby World Cup, remember, bears not the remotest resemblance to its usually assumed meaning.