PARALYMPIC GAMES: SOME PEOPLE just separate themselves from the herd. You could have walked in here yesterday having not known a thing about wheelchair rugby and you'd have left talking about Ryley Batt. Actually, strike that. You could have walked in here having never seen, heard of or dreamed up the very concept of sport itself and still you'd have spent your evening telling whoever you met about the bullet-headed Aussie who treated his side's game against Sweden as his own personal play thing.
To say he was man of the match would be to pathetically undersell it. Ryley Batt was the match.
Australia will most likely duke it out with the USA for the gold medal over the weekend so their 60-47 win over Sweden was hardly the stuff of news. Barely anyone was here for the scoreline anyway. Wheelchair rugby is the ultimate curio at the Paralympics, the one sport where naked aggression is a wholly endorsed, completely germane part of the game.
It’s rules are very basic – four on four, the object being to roll your chair through the goal at the other end of the court in possession of the ball – but what attracts the crowds is, essentially, the violence. The chairs are built for giving and taking punishment in a sport made for YouTube compilations. They don’t call it Murderball in order to keep people away.
“I was sitting at back in the village watching the wheelchair basketball the other day,” says Aussie player Chris Bond, “and I’m just going, ‘Hit him! Hit him!’ Rugby is different. This is the one contact sport in the Paralympics and you can see why everyone loves it.”
They’ll love it more after they see Batt do his thing. Or maybe they’ll hate it more. One way or another, they’ll keep watching. Like the best player in any rugby match, he was the quickest, strongest, most agile man on view. He was the best at beating players, he was the best at stopping them. He was the best at scoring – 30 of Australia’s goals were his; the next best total was 14. No Swede made it into double figures.
And of course, he was the best at milling through opposition players and leaving them tattooed to the floor. Time and again, he was sent to the sin-bin for knocking over Swedes. It’s part of the game but you still get a play in the bin on the back of it. Each time he did, he looked around all innocent at the refs and then grouched all the way to the sideline.
This being entertainment as much as is sport, the PA had Michael Jackson telling him he was Bad, Bad, Real Real Bad all the way there each time.
Hilariously, when The Irish Times asked him about it afterwards, he pointed the finger at those crafty Swedes.
“Well, I was nervous coming in because I know how dirty they are.”
“Ooh, don’t say that,” fretted the press-aide Gamesmaker, her Paralympic life so far flashing before her eyes having heard barely a harsh word all week.
“Nah, it’s alright,” smiled Batt.
“They’re dirty but that’s how they play and good on ’em. That’s how they get in people’s heads. They’re full of naughty hits and tactical moves and that’s how they play. As you could see in that game, they got in our head a little bit and rattled us near the end.
“It’s part of the sport and that’s what you have to do. I know I went through about eight tyres in that game. It was just hard hitting and my sides and abs and stuff are killing me at the moment.
“You come into a game like that and you don’t know what’s going to happen. All those illegal hits can be dangerous. I guess we played the smarter game of not doing the illegal stuff. We played our natural game.”
You looked like you were getting angry with the referees out there?
“Nah, I wouldn’t say I was angry. The refs do a fantastic job. Sometimes I do feel like I get a bit hard done by. I guess that’s just the kind of player I am. I like the physical stuff and maybe not a lot of people like watching me.”
Au contraire, Ryley. That just couldn’t be further from the truth.
The Aussies are playing again at 10 o’clock this morning. Find a television.
