Friday 7 September 2007

in spiked this week

Rugger buggers vs
90-minute bigots
Rugby snobs who denounce 'soccer' for its rowdy fans and shocking chants are missing the point: football is theatre.

"There are few things more tiresome in sport than rugby union fans boasting that their pursuit, as a spectacle and in its ethics, is superior to what they refer to as ‘soccer’. (OK, perhaps there are more annoying observations that are constantly regurgitated: that we ‘now have the technology’ to implement video refereeing in football; that the grunting by female competitors at Wimbledon is unladylike and that the price of strawberries and cream has become exorbitant; or that – and I cannot believe I actually heard someone make this point on BBC Radio Five Live the other day – American wrestling is fixed.)

Still it is annoying, and with the onset of the World Cup I guess you can imagine what the rugger buggers have been saying in the media, comparing their sport favourably to that ghastly game for proletariat ruffians..."