Call time on rugby’s obnoxious ‘eight-pint brigade’
Rising number of drink-related incidents in the stands is spoiling the international game, writes Daniel Schofield
It is a point of pride to some rugby supporters that they are allowed to bring their pint to their seat during a game. Rugby supporters, you see, are trusted to drink a beer while watching a match without starting a riot, unlike their football brethren. Never mind that overpriced, tasteless beer is available in the concourses of virtually every football stadium, the act of taking a pint into their stands makes rugby supporters a superior breed. But is that trust merited?
A snapshot of recent incidents during the autumn internationals suggests not. According to witnesses at the Wales v New Zealand match, a disabled man was subjected to obscene abuse for asking a group of men to stop standing.
Mark Cleland, Chief Inspector of the British Transport Police, reported that there were two arrests, six violent crimes and more than 20 incidents that required police intervention following that game. “Always a disappointment to review the post-incident crime and see that, yet again, rugby fans were worse than football fans in Cardiff this weekend with their [post-match] drunken violent behaviour,” Cleland wrote.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example. There are countless other reports of such obnoxiousness. Fights, once unheard of at rugby grounds, are now fairly commonplace at international matches, less the result of any deep-rooted tribalism than intoxicated boorishness.
Another inevitable result of the “eight-pint brigade” is the regular need to go to the toilet. Typically, this happens during games, forcing an entire row to get up to accommodate those who cannot regulate their bladders. If you have the misfortune to be sitting next to a group in this drinking pattern, then you will spend the game like a jack-in-the-box.
Two important points to note are that this practice is virtually non-existent at club level, and that it is only a small minority who spoil it for everyone else, although the same was said of football hooligans.
It is also the product of a rising trend, where the sport is secondary to the drinking. Call it the “dartification” of rugby. Of course, dressing up and drinking to oblivion existed at the Hong Kong Sevens long before the “Ally Pally” made it a Christmas institution. That is fine as long as you accept that the event is incidental to the act of inebriation.
The problem comes when this behaviour creeps into games where people have paid £80 or more a ticket to watch the actual sport, rather than some imbecile castigating others for not joining in his attempt to start a Mexican wave. There is an obvious solution: close the bars during the game. Yet Stephen Brown, the Rugby Football Union chief executive, reacted with horror to this suggestion.
“About 40 per cent of our bar takings come during the match, including half-time,” Brown said. “That would be a substantial drop in revenue if we were to cut that for the six or seven games we have here [at Twickenham].”
Not only would this affect the RFU’S precious bottom line, but it would be unfair on the thousands of ordinary supporters who manage to watch a game while enjoying a drink without acting like a moron. So, I would propose another solution: if you get up during the game then you will not be allowed back in until half-time, or not at all if it is in the second half. Going down the theatre route would be simple to enforce, would hopefully make drinkers moderate their consumption and ensure the performance is treated with the seriousness it deserves.