Hyping up the violent imagery an unhealthy route for rugby to take

About midway through the slick promotional video for Ireland’s two Test Series against South Africa, former Munster centre Damian de Allende makes a pronouncement about the first game on Saturday in Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld.

“That first game against Ireland at Loftus, it’s gonna feel like war,” he says.

De Allende’s cameo is contained in Unfinished Business, a two minute, 16-second length collage of players and talking heads that has veered abruptly away from the traditional rugby promotion and directly into the lane of professional boxing.

In another section, “violence, aggression, that’s what rugby is” says Jim Hamilton, the former Scotland lock. Hamilton also posted the Unfinished Business video on X this week along with his comment. “The world is starting to wake up to what the true heartbeat of rugby is. Chaos. Violence, Beauty. LFG [let’s f***ing go].”

It shows players from both Ireland and South Africa scoring tries and making tackles, it shows Leinster-bound RG Snyman breaking through and delivering one of his famous offloads and it frames the Springbok’s director of rugby Rassie Erasmus alone with his thoughts on the Stade de France pitch holding a rugby ball in the minutes after Ireland beat South Africa in their World Cup pool match last year.

It was the third time in a row Ireland had beaten South Africa after wins in the Aviva Stadium in 2017 and 2022 in autumn internationals.

War is mentioned again by a commentator, this time an “all-out war” with the video closing with two players, Irish centre Bundee Aki and South Africa’s Jesse Kriel in profile facing each other like a pair of heavyweight sluggers at a weigh-in looking as though they are eager to get on it right there and not wait for fight night.

As the video comes to an end, the profiles of the players move closer together with bolts of lightning shooting from their eyes, then closes with the Springbok and South African logo “Forever Green Forever Gold”.

From the many comments on social media, the hype video appears to have gone down very well with fans. Perhaps part of that is because it is something new for rugby, and that it has not reached the weary levels of fakery in professional boxing, which even when the aggression and insults are not fake, they seem fake because it has been done so many times in the past.

The Springbok video makers also invent a narrative to go with the idea that the match is going to reach DEFCON 1 in terms of physicality in the contact zones of tackling and breakdown. Ireland, it says, have broken into the exclusive international club, which was previously the preserve of the All Blacks and Springboks, two teams that for years, it claims, ruled world rugby.

It says that the new contender Ireland punched through the ceiling in last year’s World Cup pool game. It then runs through a number of people, including Argentina coach and former Leinster outhalf Felipe Contepomi, saying that “for me Ireland are still the best team in the world”.

Scotland playmaker Finn Russell appears too, saying the same thing as Contepomi.

“Lots of opinions, lots of talk” runs the commentary before adding “but the time for talk is over.”

Perhaps the most provocative part in the sequence is a short a clip taken from Newstalk with Off The Ball presenter Ger Gilroy not holding back. “They’re supposed to be this big macho culture when actually all they are, are whining babies,” he says, the context, like many of the other comments, excluded. But that doesn’t matter.

The theme is that there is much more at stake in these two Test matches than merely the score of an out-of-season [for Ireland] game. The matches are inflated and expanded to another level.

The promotion puts respect, reputation and even honour into the pot and suggests that a win against Ireland would validate the Springboks as being not just world champions but the best team in the world.

It also arrives after several weeks of what could be considered trash talk from South African players, with one feeding into the other and falsely building up the Tests as monumental grudge matches.

De Allende, who promised the war, recently spoke of how the Springboks felt “disrespected” by media criticism after their 38-3 defeat by Ireland in Dublin in 2017. Eben Etzebeth, their giant secondrow, also said that the Irish media targeted him after the World Cup match, accusing Ireland of arrogance.

Probably the alleged hurt, disrespect, Irish arrogance and the promise to deliver real conflict in Pretoria is a clever way to sell tickets. This week’s game is sold out, but there are still seats available for the second Test in Durban next week.

Still, without being po-faced, there is a question for rugby. Everyone knows matches must be profitable to keep the game healthy. But does it want to normalise the talking up of war and violence on the pitch to attract a younger, bloodthirsty audience?

And is it appropriate given the cases currently running through the courts here and in the UK involving brain-damaged rugby players?

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