Matt Williams: Nic White’s dive does not justify horrific online abuse

One of rugby’s deepest held principles is that players do not fake injury and take dives. As the rugby joke goes: “Soccer is 90 minutes of pretending you are hurt, while rugby is 80 minutes of pretending you are not hurt.”

In my playing days, anyone within our club who was suspected of taking a dive in a match was immediately nominated for the “Greg Louganis Award” for the worst dive of the day.

Louganis was an American diver at the 1988 Seoul Olympics who, while attempting a backwards summersault, smacked the back of his head on the springboard on the way down to the pool. Needless to say, it was a horrible dive.

At its heart, the purpose of the Louganis Award was a light-hearted way to remind players that taking a dive in rugby is telling a lie to the referee about a fellow player.

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Rugby School conceived the game as a system that attempts to lead young people down a path of how to be a valuable member of society. Deception and lying were never part of rugby culture because they are not acceptable behaviours in wider society.

In the past, any unfortunate individual who did take a dive on a rugby field was immediately castigated on the pitch by both teams and usually by the referee as well. As the great Nigel Owens famously once said to a potential Louganis Award nominee: “Get up man. This is not soccer.”

The Wallaby scrumhalf Nic White is a ferocious competitor. Last week, in the white hot heat of confronting the Springboks, he made an error and took a dive. Let us not be too harsh on White. Like all of us who have ever played the game, he made an error of judgment.

His opponent was Faf de Klerk, the diminutive blond Springboks scrumhalf. His highly aggressive and skilful play is deeply admired across the globe. However, to the opposition team, he is like a swarm of hornets crossed with an untrained puppy. He is an infuriatingly annoying pest, all over everyone, all the time.

Last week in the sunshine of the Adelaide Oval, the needle on the pressure gauge between the Springboks and the Wallabies was well into the red when the base of a creaking Australian scrum became a confrontational flash point between White and de Klerk. Five metres from the Wallaby try line, White was trying to clear the scrum and de Klerk was trying to disrupt White’s pass. As de Klerk’s hand reached out for the ball his fingers merely brushed Nic White’s face.

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White carried on as if nothing had happened for a step or two – because in reality, nothing had happened – before he collapsed to the hallowed turf of the Adelaide Oval clutching his face.

By unanimous acclamation, White was immediately the winner of last week’s Louganis Award.

At this point, the spirit of Owens should have been channelled by New Zealand referee Paul Williams, who simply should have told White to get up and stop carrying on like a pork chop. Yet astonishingly, in a match-defining moment with the complicit assistance of the TMO Brendon Pickerill, de Klerk was sin binned. The entire rugby world could see that justice had not been served.

Now, here is the great part for rugby.

While White perpetrated one of rugby’s most grievous cultural sins in winning the Louganis Award, de Klerk upheld one of rugby’s greatest cultural strengths by respecting the referees’ decision.

De Klerk was the victim of a deception and a grievous error from the officials. As the scales of justice were being outrageously tipped against him, he held back all the phrases that must have been aching to jump from the tip of his tongue. He simply smiled at the slings and arrows of the game’s most outrageous fortune, humbly accepted the referees’ decision and jogged off to the sin bin.

One scrumhalf gave the rugby world a very poor example, while the other was a role model. Proving that the game remains the greatest of teachers.

The entire episode is what coaches term a “coachable moment”. A scene that all in the game can learn from.

Firstly, it is a reminder to every elite rugby player that they are responsible to uphold the values and culture of the game. A simple working definition of culture is, “the way we do things around here”.

The way we do things around here in rugby is that we don’t lie about the actions of an opposition player. Whether it is in the U10s or the Six Nations, a player who pretends to be injured and takes a dive is attempting to force the referee to make a decision based on a lie.

Secondly, respecting the referees’ decisions, even when they are wrong, as difficult as that is, must remain sacrosanct. We only have to consider the problems that GAA’s officials are now facing to see the truth of this statement.

Another of rugby’s greatest cultural traditions is to play the ball and not play the person. White made an error. He has been found guilty in the court of public opinion and now it’s time for us all to move on.

While the rugby public rightly expects our players to act within the norms of what we perceive as rugby culture, far more frequently we are seeing players and coaches being abused and attacked on traditional and social media when their team simply does not win.

Criticism of leading players and coaches regarding performance is expected by all involved. Disagreement about how a game was played is a legitimate topic for public discussion.

However, what is not acceptable are the now almost weekly vitriolic personal attacks on players and coaches from parts of the traditional media that encourage the faceless cowards on social media to troll individual sportsmen and women.

We only have to witness the vicious attacks in recent months by the New Zealand media on their national teams’ players and coaches to understand how the media’s misguided leadership created the foundation that encouraged the keyboard warriors to launch a flood of horrid personal attacks against New Zealand players and coaches.

While White obviously made an error of judgment, that does not in any way justify the vitriolic personal attacks, mostly from South African supporters, that have swamped him this week.

The Louganis Award was born in the amateur days when self-governance was conducted by the players. Couched in humour, it was a crude attempt to reinforce the need for everyone involved to respect the game’s culture.

While that message must remain strong, leaders in both the media and sports administration must work to find ways to protect athletes and coaches from the mental and emotional horrors of online personal attacks when they make an error in simply playing a game they love.