Sir, – I enjoy reading Matt Williams’s columns and his insights into life and rugby, but it seems that even this egalitarian Aussie cannot hide the prejudices that exist within rugby followers when it comes to soccer fans.
In his column (Sports Monday,February 20th) in which he extols Irish rugby supporters and castigates the powers that be in the IRB for the fiasco in Paris, he baldly states, “If that was an international soccer crowd, there would have been a riot.”
What caused this sentence to suddenly appear? What evidence has he got for the assertion? Our last experience as soccer fans in Paris was a more outrageous decision by officialdom and yet we didn’t riot or storm the Bastille.
Methinks that the Chardonnay, thick-pile carpet and feudal system is deeply ingrained in the rugby followers’ psyche all right, especially when it comes to the truly beautiful game. – Yours, etc,