FOR DECADES, RUGBY BOYS WERE TREATED LIKE GODS. BUT WHY, EXACTLY?

ICAN still see them swanning around the town centre on a Friday afternoon. By their blue blazers did we know them. The rugby ‘elite’ at Coleraine Academical Institution back in the Seventies.

The 1st XV. The 17-year-old sporting gods of the school. The only ones permitted to ditch the ‘ordinary’ navy, red and white candy-striped blazers worn by the school proletariat. For the rugby boys it was the blue of victory, the blue of superiority, the blue of entitlement.

Many were boarders, as was my then boyfriend. And he too proudly wore the blue.

Oh, he was an exceptionally gifted player, alright. And it was never the talent that I had any issue with.

I played a lot of sport myself back then – I was a 1st team hockey player and a competitive cross-country runner. It wasn’t the sport that bothered me. It was the attitude.

‘Why do you get to wear a blue blazer just because you can play a game a bit better than some other people?’ I’d ask my boyfriend and his friends who were also, of course, rugby ‘blues’. They hunt in packs, after all.

They’d laugh, shrug their shoulders, and tell me I didn’t ‘get’ it. But I did. ‘So why doesn’t your school give, say, red blazers to the top 15 when it comes to exams,’ I’d say, partly to needle them and partly because I felt that it was a legitimate enough question. And they’d roll their eyes and tell me not to be stupid.

Even then, back in the Seventies, there was something about rugby that I could never quite stomach. And all these decades later, while I can admire the sporting prowess and skill when I watch Ireland play, I still have no time for all that it represents.

And it starts at school. That’s where the pedestals are erected. That’s where the players are told they are ‘special’. That’s where they are set apart. That’s where the entitlement and the arrogance and the swagger really take root. And that’s where teenage boys learn that they can have anything they want.

Add a few years to that equation, and a great deal of money, and while, as we now know, the men we have been reading about for the past nine weeks are not guilty, we have had a ringside seat to a world that is so full of entitlement, misogyny, high-fiving self-congratulation and general disregard for others that it would make you despair.

My son played rugby when he was young. He started in primary school and, because he is generally sporty, he was pretty good. But then he discovered hockey and his true talents came to the fore.

For a while, though, he played both games, and his stepfather and I would arrive up to the school on a Saturday to watch him run out on the rugby pitch. I hated it. Not the sport itself. And nor was I worried about him. I’m not one of those squeamish mothers who want to run on to the pitch every time their little darling is touched.

What I hated was the attitude – of the coaches, the other parents and some of the older boys. And it was extremely telling to see that the boy who was the class bully was being feted as the best player on the pitch. It’s something I’ve never forgotten.

SO, when the time came and a choice had to be made, I was delighted when my son opted for hockey over rugby. I played once myself. Yes, a rugby match. I was about 16 at the time and those of us who played schools hockey were drafted in for a curtainraiser before a big rugby match. An all-female game. Which would have been good fun had it not been for my realisation that we were actually just being rolled out for a bit of a laugh.

Girls, you know? Sure what would they know about rugby – or sport, for that matter?

I played through gritted teeth, ignoring the catcalls and the laughter from the sheepskin brigade on the sidelines.

I took a few knocks, actually, and, interestingly, the first of the two times that I have ever fainted in my life happened when I got home that night. Some kind of portent, I always thought.

The following year, they came looking for me to play again in another curtain-raiser.

And I told them what they could do with their oval-shaped ball.