Manchester abuse does not bode well for rugby union

As I type this I am not aware  whether the unsavoury incident in Manchester last Sunday morning, in which England rugby’s head coach Eddie Jones was verbally abused by four men on his way to watch a soccer match at Old Trafford, involved four of my own countrymen, but it does draw attention to a vein of hypocrisy that has long resided close to the surface in the sport of rugby union.

See here for a link to an article by Robert Kitson on the subject that appears today upon the website of – THE GUARDIAN

The rugby community prides itself on its hearty ‘hail fellow, well met’ camaraderie, team spirit and insistence upon playing according to the most exemplary rules of conduct ‘on the field’ whilst simultaneously also unofficially sanctioning the consumption of large amounts of alcohol, partying and getting up to high jinks off it.

This is perhaps best epitomised by the well-worn quip ‘Football is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans whereas rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen‘.

In fact the origin of this adage lies with the redoubtable W.J. Carey, in 1890 one of the founder-members of the Barbarians club, who coined its motto ‘Rugby football is a game for gentlemen in all classes, but for no bad sportsman in any class‘.

In a way, both sum up aspects of rugby’s eternal contradiction. Every rugby union clubhouse hosts a communal atmosphere of mutual respect based upon past or current playing experience for which another famous motto – that of the hero protagonists in Alexandre Dumas’s 1844 novel The Three Musketeers, viz. ‘All for one and one for all, united we stand and divided we fall‘ seems neatly appropriate.

Whether they be a schoolboy junior nervously making his debut for the first team, or a gnarled veteran now presiding over club functions as president or chairman of the club in his dotage, there is a sense in which every rugby club member is bound together by a bond of mutual respect and loyalty borne of the fact that in their playing days – even if these were decades apart – they put their body on the line for their team-mates and indeed ‘the club’ concerned.

With those self-same team mates, they had probably also had some pretty wild escapades off the pitch as well – many of which no doubt involved potential damage to both property and life and limb (their own and other people’s), technical theft – e.g. of road cones, milk floats driven around towns and anything else which came to hand on a particular night out after a game – and boorish, sexist behaviour … all supposedly coming under the heading of ‘rugby players relaxing after a hard game’, with a large dose of that old chestnut ‘What goes on tour stays on tour’ on top.

Need I go on?

You already get my drift, I’m sure.

The same applies on the pitch in the modern era, just as it did in days of yore. Throughout the 20th Century, before video replay evidence became available to the authorities, large areas of in particular forward-play were essentially self-policing, or perhaps that should read ‘completely lawless’.

Incidents which – had they occurred upon the streets of any minor town (let alone a capital city) – would have resulted in a charge, conviction and then probably gaol sentence for offences ranging from attempted murder to GBH, in the game of rugby union had a blind eye turned to them and/or were regarded as no more than ‘the forwards sorting themselves out’ [a misdescription often colluded with by those on the receiving end of such violence as much as those perpetrating it].

Every male rugby player and fan has an inner ‘teenage boy having a lark’ beating within them. It is exhibited by every commentator and pundit and every player dipping his toe into media work, as they indulgently comment upon some scene of players on both sides laying into each other with gusto as “Oh dear, there’s a bit of ‘handbags’ going on, nothing serious …”

I well remember, and sometimes repeat as a tale to others, the occasion I was watching a Leicester Tigers versus Bath match on television when a prolonged and fearsome ‘free-for-all’ suddenly erupted between the front rows in the second half. At the end of the match, one of the Bath props was then interviewed live on the edge of the pitch sporting a black eye, a still-bleeding eyebrow and a badly-swollen lip.

Asked what on earth had got into the front rows that such an incident happened, he shrugged with a sheepish smile and said “We were having a party …”

And that was that. Both player and interview giggled … and events moved on. No condemnation by the coverage pundits or commentators, just a ‘rogues code of honour’ that is was all part of an afternoon at a rugby game.

In 2018, as rugby union’s administrators seek to develop it as a global sport, the nature of its crowds is rapidly changing.

A newer, younger, less well-informed, type of spectator is being attracted to the ‘event occasion’ of big rugby games. Some might say they’re less interested in the rugby and more interested in being part of a jingoistic movement. Cripes, it’s as if rugby is now attracting the soccer hooligan brigade!

Old-fashioned rugger types might turn their faces away in horror. It won’t belong before things like the tradition respect supposedly afforded rugby referees at all levels of the game is going to disappear.

It might be seen as an over-reaction on my part, but Eddie Jones’ potentially worrying experience in Manchester last weekend may prove to be an unwelcome omen of things to come.