I’VE BEEN on something of a sporting high recently, though this has little to do with us winning the Grand Slam. Well nothing at all to do with it, actually – for I can’t stand rugby. And so it has been since grammar school, where, twice weekly at compulsory games practice, winter after endless winter, I spent many pain-filled hours being mauled and trampled by oversized, rugby-enthused schoolmates.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t like playing any sport. I loved cricket, even though I was blind as a bat and never managed to score more than half-a-dozen runs in an innings.
I enjoyed hockey, which isn’t altogether dissimilar from football. But I detested rugby – though slightly less, it should be said, than I disliked the man who coached us. To this day, I remain convinced that a sadistic streak the width of a sports field was a necessary qualification for a PE teacher in those days.
During rugby practice, I’d do my best to remain anonymous, shuffling about on the fringes of the mob, feigning interest, and silently praying that the ball wouldn’t come anywhere near me. Just generally minding my own business, and making sure that I didn’t get in anybody’s way.
Yet every so often the borderline-lunatic who coached us, well aware of my lack of enthusiasm, would scream at the top of his voice, “Pass it to Adams; pass it to Adams,” and then delight in my disappearance with the ball under a sea of boots and bodies.
When I finally emerged, battered and mud splattered, he’d greet me with a sadistic sneer: “Well played, Adams. We’ll make a rugby player of you yet”.
He knew as well as I did that neither he nor anyone else could ever “make a rugby player of me”. For I am a small person; and rugby is not for small people.
It is a sport where bodily bulk, so often an encumbrance in both the real and the sporting worlds, is vital.
In rugby, there is no need for skill and co-ordination, only sheer brute force, so the large cumbersome person is in his element.
Even taking into account the oversized person’s understandable delight at eventually discovering a sport that he’s good at, the effect rugby has on the people who play it is remarkable. The change in their character upon pulling on a rugby shirt is of Jekyll and Hyde proportions.
Away from the game, rugby players are almost invariably placid types, who quietly meander through life, bothering no one. But as soon as they set off in pursuit of that oval-shaped ball, they become like demented, rampaging bulls, eager to trample and maul anyone or anything that gets in their way. I think, again, the explanation for this lies in the size of the people who play the game.
With the occasional exception, such as myself, smaller people tend to be more feisty and aggressive than their larger counterparts.
A small man, particularly with a few drinks inside him, will fight at the drop of a hat.
Whereas the larger man, even when drunk, tends to be more circumspect and far less easily riled.
In short, as it were, the vertically challenged are usually a nastier type.
I suspect that behind these markedly different temperamental traits is a Darwinian-type law of nature meant to ensure diversity of size within the species.
An old work friend of mine (over six feet tall, and no natural philosopher), put it succinctly to me one day, when he leaned down, red in the face, and said, “Davy, it’s just as well that we big men aren’t as nasty as you wee men, or it wouldn’t be too long before there weren’t any wee men like you left”.
I didn’t feel any need, or inclination, to make a reply.
So, while small men go through life venting their anger and frustration at will, large men tend to bottle up their aggression.
This is where rugby comes in.
It acts as a vital release valve; allowing large men to rid themselves of vast pools of pent-up aggression.
Within a loose set of rules, they can take out all of their frustrations on people of a similar size, without doing much damage. An unintended by-product of the violence in rugby is that supporters of the game tend to be very well behaved.
This is hardly surprising, either.
With more than enough punching, gouging, kicking and stomping on the pitch to satisfy him, the punter feels no need to indulge in it himself.
It is not winning the Grand Slam that has me on a sporting high, but the recent exploits of Liverpool Football Club, and the distinct possibility that this year we may at last win the English Premier League title.
When I cheered myself hoarse after Ireland’s win last Saturday, it was largely a delayed reaction to the heroics of another Irishman (well, at least more Irish than Barack Obama), ex-Liverpool player Danny Murphy, who earlier that afternoon had played a magnificently influential role in Fulham’s defeat of Manchester United.
Although, if we really must make a competitive sport out of an excuse for large gentlemanly types to act like savages, I’m delighted that our boys are best at it.
