Rugby World Cup 2019

[Xela]

30 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Rugby League is entertaining , but so much more simple than Union I will admit. Overall it’s a proper mans game. It makes footballers and football in general rather embarrassing. 

When you see the diving footballers do and the play acting and histrionics then you lose respect for them. 

I also like how the rugby domestic league continues despite international games. 

[Rugeley Villa]

Another thing too is that they respect the ref in rugby . 

[JB]

33 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

On the other hand, I'm merely indifferent to League. It is at least a working class sport. Whereas Union nauseates me, with its ghastly middle class smugness, childish drinking rituals, old boy networking and all the rest of it. I was made to play it at grammar school, and I hated it. Daily Express sport. 

You’ve obviously had very, very limited exposure to rugby union, then. That’s such an old-fashioned and out-of-touch point-of-view. It really annoys me, to be honest.

As with most stereotypes, there’s an element of truth to it; it’s not perfect (what is?) but I’m not from a privileged background, neither are my friends, family or 90% of the people I’ve played rugby alongside. We bear no resemblance to what you’ve described. 

I’ve been to Twickenham several times and there are plenty of posh clearings in the woods but that’s only a small section - there’s a broad spectrum, without the nastiness and hostility that I saw and heard during my time as a season ticket holder at VP. Even our national team has a ‘working class’ core to it. 

It puzzles me why you feel the need to post quite insultingly in a thread full of rugby fans about how shit it is.

[Rugeley Villa]

They like their rugby league in Leeds mike. 

Rugby a thugs game played by gentlemen. Football a gentleman’s game played by thugs....Or so I’ve been told 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Rugeley Villa

[mjmooney]

8 minutes ago, JB said:

It puzzles me why you feel the need to post quite insultingly in a thread full of rugby fans about how shit it is.

 

[WhatAboutTheFinish]

8 hours ago, JB said:

You’ve obviously had very, very limited exposure to rugby union, then. That’s such an old-fashioned and out-of-touch point-of-view. It really annoys me, to be honest.

As with most stereotypes, there’s an element of truth to it; it’s not perfect (what is?) but I’m not from a privileged background, neither are my friends, family or 90% of the people I’ve played rugby alongside. We bear no resemblance to what you’ve described. 

I’ve been to Twickenham several times and there are plenty of posh clearings in the woods but that’s only a small section - there’s a broad spectrum, without the nastiness and hostility that I saw and heard during my time as a season ticket holder at VP. Even our national team has a ‘working class’ core to it. 

It puzzles me why you feel the need to post quite insultingly in a thread full of rugby fans about how shit it is.

I love rugby and even though I'm Welsh (where obviously we can't afford posh nobbers), I think you are being a little bit oversensitive in your stance. 13 of the England starters on Saturday have attended a fee paying private school. 1 of the other two went to a selective Grammar School. Now you can protest with the experiences of you and your mates, but those stats ARE pretty telling about the requirements of success in the English game and leave it open, quite rightly, to a certain level of criticism.

[JB]

Fair enough, perhaps I am being oversensitive but that sort of thinking gets tiresome after a while. I think it was somewhat ignorant and unnecessarily insulting.

The original post was not a critique of the class system or the relationship between privilege and achievement in the game. It was a sweeping statement based on an outdated, inaccurate stereotype. There are obviously elements of truth but calling it a ‘Daily Express sport’ is narrow-minded and a weirdly aggressive thing to post in a thread about rugby.

It reads like the view of someone who formed their opinion in the 1980s and hasn’t given it a thought since. My dad used to think in a similar way. Being tarred with the ‘posh Tory-boy’ brush hits a nerve. Rugby is not a belief system.

As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle and is far more nuanced than writing it off as a sport for the rich and making assumptions about the political leanings of those in the game. There are plenty of bell ends involved in rugby, just like there are in football, cricket etc. (University drinking rituals are definitely not confined to rugby.) But most people are cool. My frame of reference isn’t just ‘me and my mates’ but everyone I’ve encountered during my years in and around the game. It’s just as diverse and inclusive as other sports, particularly at the grass roots level. 

There are certainly ‘class issues’ (for want of a better term) at the highest level. However, as far as I’m aware, private education figures don’t take into account those who achieved full sporting scholarships, as is common place in rugby (which obviously raises its own issues and is another argument entirely). I believe that roughly 55% of English players in the Premiership were privately educated (again not taking scholarships into account) which is obviously disproportionate and is symptomatic of broader issues but doesn’t suggest it’s a closed shop.

I’m not going to try to defend that or the private education system and there will be a huge number of players who’ve slipped through the net due to not playing the game at school. I’m disappointed that I didn’t have the same opportunities but private schools don’t have an exclusivity agreement on rugby provision and it’s by no means an expensive game to play. I don’t know who to point the finger at but it’s probably an indictment of somebody/something somewhere that more state schools in England don’t make it part of their curriculum.

Due to the relative lack of rugby in state schools, and the scholarship system, it stands to reason that a disproportionate number of elite players are going to come from privately educated backgrounds because they’re more commonly exposed to the game. I’m not sure how that’s open to a certain level of criticism as you suggest it is? People aren’t prevented from taking part. There’s no elite stranglehold on rugby. State schools aren’t prevented from including it in their curriculum. Anybody is free to join a club.

It’s not unique to England. I lived in Australia and it’s the same there. I believe it’s also the case in Ireland and Scotland. But such reverse elitism only reinforces the divide that exists IMO. 

I live in Cardiff and there are state schools here with outstanding facilities, simply due to the fact that it’s more popular here and is therefore on the curriculum.  Rugby has gained popularity in England and will hopefully continue to do so, and become increasingly diverse and inclusive. But even now, opinions like those expressed in the original post are outdated and overly-simple.

Some people just don’t like rugby, which is fine, but some also have chip on their shoulder about it that they can’t shake off and feel the need to chuck insults around.

Right, apologies for the rant and long post. I’m off to the cycling and running threads to call everyone words removed and tell them to play real sports, not just try to be the best at exercising . 

Edited October 28, 2019 by JB

[chrisp65]

It was interesting to listen to R4 on the way home this evening, with Evan Whatsisname having a chat about the ‘legacy’ for sports of a good cup run. They had a netball woman and her attitude was, when england won the netball at the Commonwealth Games they saw an upsurge of interest of around 30,000 kids trying to get involved and joining clubs. They’d geared up for it and held taster sessions.

Then they spoke to a bloke from Aston Old Edwardians RFC. His attitude was far more downbeat. He didn’t think there would be any uptick in interest beyond possibly some 30 year olds postponing their amateur retirement by a few weeks. He said local schools and ordinary parents weren’t interested, didn’t fancy the risks and found it too technical to simply enjoy by taking a ball down the park.

He said, and I paraphrase, that comp kids weren’t involved, they were relying on people coming through from private schools where rugby union was still a thing.

I have no idea if that’s typical, that’s just what one rugby guy from an english club said on the radio today.

Edited October 28, 2019 by chrisp65

[KentVillan]

12 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It was interesting to listen to R4 on the way home this evening, with Evan Whatsisname having a chat about the ‘legacy’ for sports of a good cup run. They had a netball woman and her attitude was, when england won the netball at the Commonwealth Games they saw an upsurge of interest of around 30,000 kids trying to get involved and joining clubs. They’d geared up for it and held taster sessions.

Then they spoke to a bloke from Aston Old Edwardians RFC. His attitude was far more downbeat. He didn’t think there would be any uptick in interest beyond possibly some 30 year olds postponing their amateur retirement by a few weeks. He said local schools and ordinary parents weren’t interested, didn’t fancy the risks and found it too technical to simply enjoy by taking a ball down the park.

He said, and I paraphrase, that comp kids weren’t involved, they were relying on people coming through from private schools where rugby union was still a thing.

I have no idea if that’s typical, that’s just what one rugby guy from an english club said on the radio today.

He's probably right, tbh. It's a sport that you have to take seriously. I went to a state school that played rugby union seriously, and we attracted a lot of good rugby players because of that. So it was part of the school culture, and you'd learn the game. But it needed that ability to have 15-a-side full contact training games in the week to get you geared up for a Saturday. You aren't going to achieve that in a school where the focus is more on football.

Whereas you can develop a lot as a footballer just playing small-sided games.

17 hours ago, WhatAboutTheFinish said:

I love rugby and even though I'm Welsh (where obviously we can't afford posh nobbers), I think you are being a little bit oversensitive in your stance. 13 of the England starters on Saturday have attended a fee paying private school. 1 of the other two went to a selective Grammar School. Now you can protest with the experiences of you and your mates, but those stats ARE pretty telling about the requirements of success in the English game and leave it open, quite rightly, to a certain level of criticism.

I do agree that rugby union in England is very middle class and a bit rah. However, I reckon a few of the privately educated England RWC players will have gone to those schools on rugby scholarships, so that stat might be a bit misleading.

[JB]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

He said local schools and ordinary parents weren’t interested, didn’t fancy the risks and found it too technical to simply enjoy by taking a ball down the park.

That bit’s particularly interesting. I didn’t want to sound like (even more of) a dick by saying it before but I definitely agree that it’s an issue - it’s not the most accessible of sports rules-wise. Rugby is also pretty difficult to teach unless you have a background in it.

Not that they should be in competition with each other but the beauty of football is it’s simplicity - pretty much anyone can learn to have a kickabout with a football in seconds and you can even play by yourself. The perceived risk of injury is also a lot lower.

I think those factors will probably always hold back it’s expansion outside the traditional strongholds. It’s interesting how it became the dominant sport in certain countries, though.

Anecdotally, I think there was a slight uptake after England won the World Cup last time (that was around the time my brother and I started - me as a 17/18 year old, him 11) but it was probably mainly people who decided off their own back or were roped into joining a club. A lot more people started watching it and showing a general interest. I think of lot of that was just due to recognising the potential for facilitating all dayers, mind

[KentVillan]

The other big thing, thinking about it, is that football can be played on grass, astroturf, concrete, indoor, even sand. Whereas rugby you really have to play on grass unless you're mental (I know some games are played on 3G, but it looks pretty brutal to me).

So it favours schools with big playing fields.

Whereas I imagine most of us had a lot of our early footballing education on a concrete playground.

[LondonLax]

From the Australian perspective Rugby is very much a niche sport. It’s only played in the north eastern states (NSW, Queensland and ACT) and even there it plays a distant third fiddle to football (soccer) and Rugby League for both participation and weekly viewing numbers (even the AFL, imported from the southern states, is making inroads and biting into its turf).

As in the UK, Rugby draws its participation from fee paying private schools and a small number of state schools in wealthy suburbs. 

I think the class system in Australia is much less extreme/polarised than the UK so people are more likely to follow a few different sports simultaneously rather than falling into such distinct class tribes but the players are produced from such a small pool of the population that it is remarkable that Australia remains competitive at all on the world stage.

Having said that we have been becoming less and less competitive for at least a decade now and nothing is going on behind the scenes that suggests that slide is going to do anything other than continue for years to come. 

[villa4europe]

it was strange for me at high school because of the 2 middle schools in my catchment area 1 was a football school and the other was a rugby school, nothing to do with class or areas, they were both mixed, i went to the football school, got 3 mates I think still playing rugby at the age of 35, all 3 of them look like bambi on ice when playing football which is funny, not seen many natural sportsmen who are very good at both sports, would say that rugby isn't played at dinner time when kids are on the field doing what they want, its all football, no one is organising something with work or their mates to play 5 a side rugby, never in my youth did I get a message from a mate saying grab your boots we'll go down the park and play rugby for 6 hours, or did anyone ever toss a rugby ball about as they walked to school, its just by its nature unable to compete with the simplicity of football (apply that to all sports)

I add it to the list of sports they forced me to play that I had 0 interest in (along with tennis and basketball, my high school loved basketball) I loved hockey and indoor cricket but not outdoor (indoor being a bit more like 20/20, smash it and run)

I went to all 3 schools with the cricketer steve davies (few years younger than me, his sister was in the year below)

[snowychap]

4 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

I went to all 3 schools with the cricketer steve davies (few years younger than me, his sister was in the year below)

King Charles?

[villa4europe]

Just now, snowychap said:

King Charles?

yep + offmore and comberton

sladen was the rugby school but that's now gone, not a clue what rugby's like in kiddy anymore

[snowychap]

Just now, villa4europe said:

yep + offmore and comberton

sladen was the rugby school but that's now gone, not a clue what rugby's like in kiddy anymore

I wouldn't know, I 'm afraid..

My little brother would have been in the year above you at King Charles, though, looking at your dob on your profile. He'd have been one of the basketball bods, I think.

[villa4europe]

What's his name 

Anything indoors at KC was basketball and a little bit of gymnastics but not much from memory

Never ever played tag rugby in my life, that's definitely not a thing, neither was league 

[tomav84]

On 27/10/2019 at 20:25, JB said:

You’ve obviously had very, very limited exposure to rugby union, then. That’s such an old-fashioned and out-of-touch point-of-view. It really annoys me, to be honest.

As with most stereotypes, there’s an element of truth to it; it’s not perfect (what is?) but I’m not from a privileged background, neither are my friends, family or 90% of the people I’ve played rugby alongside. We bear no resemblance to what you’ve described. 

I’ve been to Twickenham several times and there are plenty of posh clearings in the woods but that’s only a small section - there’s a broad spectrum, without the nastiness and hostility that I saw and heard during my time as a season ticket holder at VP. Even our national team has a ‘working class’ core to it. 

It puzzles me why you feel the need to post quite insultingly in a thread full of rugby fans about how shit it is.

whilst the post was crassly put and unnecessarily insulting, as a regular twickenham visitor, there's definitely an element of truth to the post. there is a chasm of difference between those that attend an england rugby match vs the crowd i see at villa park. i wouldn't say it's a small section, but wouldn't call it the majority either. but this is purely those following England, i have no idea what the typical fan from the aviva premiership is like.

however, i wonder how many are just playing up to the middle class stereotype and not actually from any privileged background. some just act posh in what is perceived as a posh setting...the large horse racing meetings are a prime example. the fake tweed jackets and suede shoes that you see so many wearing at the rugby i'd wager never see the light of day when the wearer is not at a rugby match.

[villan-scott]

42 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

yep + offmore and comberton

sladen was the rugby school but that's now gone, not a clue what rugby's like in kiddy anymore

I went to Franche and Wolverley, and both were football mad. Despite the 2 pe teachers at Wolverley being rugby players. 

The Carolians are still going for all ages and the only club in the area I know of, whereas there’s are countless football teams. 

[LondonLax]

3 hours ago, villa4europe said:

rugby isn't played at dinner time when kids are on the field doing what they want, its all football, no one is organising something with work or their mates to play 5 a side rugby, never in my youth did I get a message from a mate saying grab your boots we'll go down the park and play rugby for 6 hours, or did anyone ever toss a rugby ball about as they walked to school, its just by its nature unable to compete with the simplicity of football (apply that to all sports)

In Sydney people are probably more likely to play a game of ‘touch football’ (essentially Rugby League but being tagged instead of tackled) with their friends or work mates than they would ‘soccer’. 

For a long time football (soccer) was seen as a silly game, mostly played by immigrants. It’s now moved on to being accepted but really only as a kids / woman’s sport.  I think they have similar attitudes in the US. 

Edited October 29, 2019 by LondonLax