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An australian P.O.V...
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Rugby is a wank; I didn't shed a tear for the Wallabies Saturday night, in fact I cheered on their demise because hopefully it'll lead to the rest of the country waking up to what a boring, over-complicated joke professional union is - penalties interrupted by Qantas ads.
Call me a hater, but I played union for five years at a private boys high school, I understand the fundamentals of the game (and the type of bloke who supports it) and appreciate the spectacle when it's done in a free-flowing manner - the problem is it seldom reaches that level.
Now, I'm so tired of hearing about the Wallabies, of how much the nation is behind them, how the Rugby World Cup is the third biggest global sporting event after the Olympics and soccer World Cup.
Fact is, rugby is a crap sport and no one in Australia really cares about it (people in NSW and Queensland might be interested, but they don't care - massive difference. As for Victoria, SA, WA and Tassie ... well they are hardly going to lose any sleep). It's an aspirational private schoolboy wankfest.
I've been to sporting events all over the world and nothing is as passionless as a Wallaby Test at Telstra Stadium. I went to a Bledisloe Cup game there and you could hear a pin drop (except for the All Black fans). The much-maligned Swans supporters generate 25 times the noise and atmosphere as Wallaby spectators.
No Wallaby fan goes home to kick the dog after a loss. No mood is altered. No one gets obliterated to drown their sorrows. There are no fights. Everyone drives home safely in their 4WDs and listens to the Best of Burt Bacharach or Norah Jones ...
Part of the reason for the fans' lack of passion is they aren't really sure what happened, and why? If rugby is so good how come they always change the farking rules? If you're looking for a red flag that a game is fatally flawed, note how often its administrators change the fundamental ways the game is played.
I mean really, you've had a century or so to work it out guys, yet every couple of seasons fans and players have to digest a raft of ridiculously technical rules like the new Experimental Law Variations in the Australian Rugby Championship. (Go on, click on that link and take a look - see if you can understand 'em).
I can't tell you how many times I've been in a pub and there's been a penalty in a Super 14 game and you ask a hardcore fan "what was that for?" and they say "not sure".
The problem with the rules is they make it easy for poor teams to spoil a game. A friend of mine who is a professional rugby coach says he's seen it happen too often where the lesser side will
slow a game down with infractions in the scrum, rucks or mauls and the better side will be blown out of the game by the referee.
That doesn't happen in the NRL; nine times out of 10, the better team on the day will win because there's nowhere to hide - unlike rugby where you can sneak around in a fog of horseshit technicalities.
Then there's the bizarre additions to the game like lifting in line-outs. I mean whatever happened to actually jumping? You might as well take a dwarf out there and toss 'em in the air to catch the footy.
Pick any round during the regular season of rugby league or AFL and you'll see three or four games that easily match the skill levels and excitement of those one or two games in an entire Super 14 season that rugby union aficionados rubber stamp 'a classic'.
Your average game of professional rugby union is criminally disjointed by penalties, brainless boots for touch when outside backs are screaming for the ball, with the result determined by kicks for goal; it's forcings back for millionaires.
If a NRL premier league backline put down as much ball as the Wallabies did on Saturday night, there'd be five or six blokes on the blower to Coles looking for gigs shifting cartons of soup to aisle 12, yet you can't shut up union fans crapping on about the "incredible skills" of their game.
Some of the backs who play union are no doubt gifted, but they never see the ball, every promising movement derailed by a pointless "tactical" kick for touch; Lote Tuqiri might as well have set up a card table on the wing and sold shots of Pernod he had so little to do.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I saw some statistics on the weekend that said, on average, the ball is in play less than 40 per cent of the time in rugby union - and Aussies have the gall to criticise American NFL for its stoppages.
Then there's the fitness of the players: If Matt Dunning is what rugby union considers a world-class athlete (compare him to league props like Steve Price, Roy Asotasi, Luke Bailey or Petero Civoniceva), get me a bucket of KFC and slab of VB - I better start training for the 2011 World Cup.
Which brings me to my next point: If rugby is so good, how come they constantly poach league players? The answer is publicity. How else would they get page upon page in The Daily Telegraph if it wasn't for Rogers-Sailor-Tuqiri-Tahu et al. Adam Ashley-Cooper and Stephen Hoiles just don't sell papers.
People talk about the tradition of rugby, but that's crap. Twenty years ago you could fire a gun at rugby Tests in Australia and hit four former Joey's boys on a bucks night.
Rugby also has no statistics. Stats are an indication of level of interest, or analysis in a game. No Wallaby fan would know if George Smith makes two tackles or 22 tackles a match.
It's often quoted that Aussies are passionate about rugby because the '03 World Cup final in Sydney was one of the highest-rating shows in Australian history. But it was about beating the smart-arsed Poms. That it was rugby is irrelevant. Aussies are passionate about the Hillsong Church too, you know. It's like saying horseracing is our No.1 sport because everyone watches the Melbourne Cup each year.
Finally, if rugby is so good, why don't the networks pay a fortune when the media rights become available? They don't, because it's not. Check out a Foxtel ratings guide, and you will find no rugby among its top 10 programs. It's all NRL and AFL games.
Look at the internet. During the footy season the biggest rugby website would be lucky to have one-fifth the audience as the biggest AFL site, or one-third the league audience.
Rugby fans in New Zealand care. In South Africa they care. In Australia, they just don't. Rugby is the fourth banana behind AFL, NRL and soccer/football (whatever you want to call it).
And before you call me un-Australian for slagging the Wallabies, lemme just say it did bother me a little that the English won, so much so I shagged a lovely Pommie gal Saturday night.
As the moment of consummation rolled toward us, I whispered in her rose pink ear - "this is for Gregan".
Thankfully there wasn't a ref around to blow it up.
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I agree, hopefully these test rules coming in with the Super 14 help fix it 'cuz I see Rugby taking a dive if something isn't done about the state of it. It's compounded by the fact the AB's lost, we could see more of a shift to other sports (League, Soccer) because although people will always be AB's dominated in NZ, it seems provincial stuff matters far less and leads to people only wanting to watch the international games.
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J
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12th October 2007, 15:22
