And not just for the poor slobs in the Forwards risking tetraplegia with every hopelessly managed, eon consuming, penalty ridden scrum, or for the Backs who have said slobs fall all over them and wrestle for the ball at every tackle. Its a punishment for all of us forced to watch it or read about it or listen to people talk about it or see it on TV. And dont tell me no-one is forced to watch it, just change channels or walk away, or slash your wrists. We are, and so are most of the professed fans, forced in one way or another to endure, whether directly or indirectly, the mind-numbingly boring and stupidly complicated opaqueness that is modern Rugger. Whether its:
out of duty to their old school tie,
because elder male relatives have played for generations and the obligation is like that ugly family portrait you cant take down because Aunty Gladys would die of a broken heart even though no-one remembers whos in the damn thing anymore;
to look impressive to gullible children who they sense might be disappointed if they dont profess to love the game they bragged about being so good at during school;
because they had to play it as kids and don't want to waste the investment of years by swapping allegiance and then copping the inevitable bollocking that would follow from their Rugger mates (who secretly admire their courage, are jealous of their greatly simplified enjoyment of a more dynamic game and are more vicious bollockers as a result);
to fit in at their place of employment;
to keep fitting in with school friends or old team-mates who havent evolved;
to network and build important business relationships;
because someone got an invite to someones box and thought 3 hours of free food and beer sounded like a good idea (only to find that no amount of beer makes the turgid wrestling match on the field any more interesting); or
because, in the same way we seem to be brainwashed into watching Soccer just because its a World Cup and therefore The Most Exciting and Significant Event in the World, there was a Rugby World Cup on and no-one wanted to see the Kiwis win or we just got tricked by promises of exciting, open, running Rugby and an International Spectacle but all we saw was the same slow, grinding mess but with lots of extra whingeing about inconsistent Northern Hemisphere interpretations of the Rules at the breakdown and cheating Number 7s. Have you read the rules governing the breakdown? Its enough to give you one.
I could go on, but I suspect that there are actually only about 8 to 12 REAL Rugby fans in Australia if you exclude small children who just follow Daddy like cute little lambs, other forms of undue influence, emotional blackmail, guilt, ulterior motives and agendas and an outright gutless inability to stand up and say enough of this $hit.
These Rugger types sit on their high horses and seek the moral high ground on so many fronts, all while concealing, or at best refusing to acknowledge in any meaningful way, a heinous act of skull-duggery that saw the Vichy Regime very nearly kill League in France completely some 60 years ago. Collaborating mit ze Nazis to asset strip and make a legitimate competitors operation illegal is apparently just an historical blip of no consequence, but League is somehow the one with all the dirty laundry off the field? Haven't they met Quade Cooper? League fans and players are scorned as mungoballers and derided as intellectually inferior bogans because of what? Working class roots, a lack of airs and graces and a refusal to apologise for ridiculously complex rules made up by 19th Century British aristocrats by professing that they add dimensions to the game and enhance the contest for the ball? Dropping a banana into a pit of ravenous chimpanzees will create a multidimensional contest too, but its not sport. And itd be a hell of a lot more entertaining than the boring and over-complicated relic that is Rugby.
The silly Rugger Buggers have been a little late to the party on a few fronts, but no-one can rush serious intellectuals like the educated and sophisticated chaps at the helm of the Game Played in Heaven (presumably because once in heaven you have unlimited time and a degree of Angelic patience and tolerance for the boredom and frustration associated with Rugby). They have even ditched their old woollen jerseys and are now basically indistinguishable from an NRL side, with the exception that their forwards are clearly a lot fatter.
They have also rather belatedly realised that their game is crap and without admitting it in as many words have applied a few band-aids to the torn and gangrenous stump that is Rugby in an attempt to make the game more attractive to viewers and fans. Until they can stop the setting up, falling over, resetting, collapsing and subsequent penalisation, penalty kicking and game restart associated with scrums from occupying 40% of the contest, theyre pushing jelly up hill with a toothpick. Scrums as a set piece might be a fascinating battle of strength, skill and psychology for historical aficionados and the 8 to 12 real Rugby fans in Australia, but for the rest of us they are just times when the gaoler supervising our punishment tightens the screws and watches with glee as we moan in agony. League scrums might be a perfunctory and odd looking way to effect a changeover and remove the forwards from the play for a bit, but they dont occupy a significant portion of game time or present a serious risk of injury and death with every collision (while in a strange contradiction also being unbelievable boring).
The Rugger Administration is at a bit of a loss, the poor petals. The whole idea of lifting in Lineouts used to be banned because it was dangerous. Then someone clever copped onto the fact that a tall bloke being thrown up into the air to the height of a 2 story building might make good TV in the same way people watch motor racing for the crashes. Suddenly player safety was less important than providing a spectacle that might compensate for the tedium otherwise being inflicted. In the end, it doesnt work. The Rugby Lineout is a bit like an NFL scrimmage line, but less exciting and less important, because 2/10s of a second after one side gets the ball it all goes to the dirt in a breakdown anyway.
And can anyone think of a more apt term for the mess that happens when one of these gentlemen athletes catches another one? Breakdown" is perfect. The breakdown of law, order, common sense and any semblance of sportsmanship, particularly from that special breed of cheat called an Openside Flanker. The best bits of most Rugby games are usually watching the heinous abuse forwards give and receive at the breakdown (Pocock getting his face ripped off by a South African in the RWC right in front of the Ref) or the expressions of dumbfounded and abject confusion when they cop another incomprehensible and utterly inconsistent penalty from a short man with a whistle who seems to make stuff up as he goes along.
That's another thing about Rugby that punishes all who are forced to endure it. The endless whining about referees' differing interpretations of the rules - coupled with the uncomfortable certainty that it's often justified and the knowledge that the game you're suffering through is as likely to be determined by some ponce with a whistle as it is by the skills and dedication of the players. When a game is so complicated that the players are constantly at risk of infringement and the refs themselves can do their own thing with impunity because their interpretation of the rules "is open" or their discretionary application of penalties falls barely short of completely ridiculous, surely you need to do something drastic?
Wait, what? Someone already did? Well that's damnedly inconvenient.
Anyway, it'll never catch on.
