Where sport is concerned, it’s basically football in the winter and cricket in the summer for me. I was recently invited to a rugby match, and it seemed impolite to refuse, although with hindsight I wish that I’d contrived an excuse.
I find it difficult to know what attracts people to such a sprawling, incomprehensible mess of a game. Two teams of grunting, hairy arsed types face off against each other, using a ‘ball’ that’s not a ball but an oval, which contrives to bounce and roll about the pitch in ridiculous fashion. One team tries to hurl and punt this artifact about. The other tries to stop them by grabbing the opposing player with the ‘ball’ and wrestling him to the ground, then piling in on top of him.
The flow is constantly interrupted by the ref’s whistle as a consequence of some obscure infringement or other. Players take an interminable amount of time to line up on the touchline, just to get the ball back into play. Then there’s the truly bizarre spectacle known as ‘the scrum’. Players go into a squashed huddle which takes forever to organise. This then proceeds to squirm across the pitch like a giant crab until somebody chucks the ‘ball’ in, at which point it collapses ignominiously into a heap.
After 80 minutes of this grinding guff, played in an incessant drizzle, the players trooped off a swamp, steaming and caked from head to foot in mud. One or two looked more than a little dazed and confused. I’d say that anyone playing this game for any length of time could literally end up needing his head tested.
In the bar afterwards (downing a welcome scotch and soda) I was asked what I thought of the game by one of the club members. I mumbled some platitudes before admitting that basically, I was more of a football man. ‘Ah yes, football’, came the slightly condescending reply. ‘A game for fannies in my opinion. Rugby, that’s a REAL man’s game’.
Well if you can’t beat ’em. Get the round in and altogether now; ‘Mary from the mountain glen, fucked herself with a fountain pen…’. Rugby. It’s a game played by cunts with odd shaped balls.
Nominated by Ron Knee
This unspeakable satanic trinity are behind an “open letter” being circulated in the cittie of perspiring dreams, calling on the Oxford Union to “show duty of care and respect for Oxford’s diverse communidees” by cancelling an invitation to speak, given to the leader of AfD, Alice Weidel. Even the Telegraph insists on calling the AfD “far-right”. (Why, FFS ??) Apparently “platforming hate speech must not be conflated with freedom of speech”
