The week after I saw Saints have their er, 'mishap' at Old Trafford, the England rugby union team had a reverse in Paris. This gives me an excuse to blather on about all sorts of things.
Although England lost the rugby union world cup final, a casual observer of the media might not have altogether noticed this. Newspapers, television and radio spoke at some length on the great virtue and admirability of the England players, even in defeat.
The debate, sometimes explicitly, was couched as ruggerites vs socceristas. The latter are paid obscenely for petulantly conning the ref, the former having none of these failings. One of the many problems wtih this perceived moral superiority of the chaps from Twickers is that so little is made of these very problems.
On an intellectual level, I'm fond of the idea that a great game should have great rules. Rugby union matches - at any level - seem to feature an awful lot of infringements. So many that I can't divest myself of the thought that either the rules are poor or the players are.
The greater difficulty, though, is away from the pitch rather than on it. I've always felt slightly queasy at the routine deceit in the present and falsification of the past which seem endemic to rugby union the world over. Whether it's shamatuerism, player numbers in Sri Lanka or crowd figures at the Stoop, rugby union doesn't seem to be an honest game.
It is, however, a game of ruling elites, to a degree that goes beyond incongruity. I acknowledge that I personally have a deep suspicion of ruling elites, but that's a subject for another blog entry. Rugby union has an uncanny knack of being the game of social prestige and political influence, often in somewhat unsavoury circumstances. Regimes closely associated with rugby union include not only apartheid South Africa and Vichy France, but also Ceaucescu's Romania and even Salazar's Portugal.
In and of itself, this is more unfortunate than anything else. What I find harder to accept is the tendency of rugby union to (ab?)use its status to attack rugby league. The favourite tactic has historically been the outright ban, as was in place in the British armed forces until 1994. In France during the Second War, the ban - which extended to imposing the name 'jeu a treize' until the late 1980s - included transfer of assets from the French Rugby League to the French Rugby Union. The beneficiaries of this war crime continue unrepentant while its uncompensated victims continue to await justice. Moreover, bans can also act as a prelude to erasure from history - witness the 'Rugby' World Cup, contested in rugby union a mere twenty-three years after the first such competition in rugby league, yet known by a generic title.
So, how do all these seamy bits manage to go largely unreported in the media? Might it be because the media are basically the mouthpiece of the ruling elite...?
Currently listening to: last night's 'News Quiz' on Listen Again.
