‘Tisn’t fair! (but it may be life)

Please pardon the self-pitying whine but there’s little doubt that the sports fans among us could be forgiven for coming to the view that we have more to lose than most from the present coronavirus crisis.

Arguably elite female sport in the UK has come under huge pressure precisely because its position in the general scheme of things is affected by an unfortunate collision between harsh commercial reality and the fact that its recent growth and advancement has always depended – not entirely but significantly – upon a justificatory ‘equality’ argument that is dependent upon a stable, profitable and ever-growing world economy – something that currently no longer exists.

In England the curtailment of football’s WSL and rugby union’s Tyrells Premier 15s leagues, whilst the resumption of the 2019/2020 seasons (to ‘completion’) of their male counterparts the Premier League and the Gallagher Premiership continues to be actively planned by the Government and the relevant sports administrators and clubs, is a stark reminder  of some essential truths.

The news this week that in addition Tyrells three-year sponsorship of the Premier 15s competition is to end with immediate effect is another worrying symptom of the precarious status of elite female sport in the context of living with a pandemic that brings with it attendant and potentially fatal public health consequences.

I don’t address these developments from a viewpoint that all this is unfair and/or unacceptable.

The facts speak for themselves: during the 2018/2019 season the average crowd at a Premier 15s match was well under 1,000 and the attendance at the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup Final was just 17,440.

Nevertheless, it is also true that – with female elite sports still in an early stage of development – perception and marketing are all-important.

To provide elite female rugby players – and particularly those at international level – with equivalent or similar back-up facilities and indeed also coaching and medical support staff to those taken for granted in the male game has been a welcome and important statement of intent in itself.

Yet also, from another angle, a luxury which (whilst quite possibly affordable in days of relatively bountiful milk and honey) cannot necessarily be regarded as essential in a recession.

Nevertheless, with the RFU in a precarious financial state largely of its own making – not to mention the general mess that is Southern Hemisphere rugby plus the manifold problems afflicting World Rugby in the men’s version of the game around the globe – one can perhaps understand why administering even just the hundreds of necessary regular Covid-tests per week to elite female rugby players (when the costs involved are measured against the likely gate receipts and broadcast revenues) in order to resume playing their key club league competition is considered a daunting, not to say foolhardy, prospect.

Sadly, rugby union – right up there in the list of physical contact team sports – will continue to have more difficulties than most with “returning to normal”.

The latest changes to the laws of the rugby union now apparently under active consideration by the authorities in order to make the game safe in this exacting era of social-distancing and the other extreme precautions necessary to prevent or protect an individual from passing the coronavirus to any other are draconian and – many might argue – so detrimental to the nature and spirit of the game as almost tantamount to hanging a large question mark its continued existence.

I’m referring to uncontested lineouts; no resetting of scrums (an automatic free-kick against the offending team); no mauls/rucks; no tackle above waist-height. Even possibly doing away with scrums (and forwards?) altogether.

This against a background in which for the past century and a half tight-five forwards have spent a minimum quarter of an hour of every match rubbing their faces against each other.

For the majority of rugby fans around the world the thought of the above proposals – and a number of other more outlandish ones to boot – being actively considered as a possible price worth paying in order to the sport “back to normal” is a bridge too far.

It’s just not cricket to be messing around with the oval ball game like this!