Sonja’s tears shame odious oafs on Twitter
What’s happening to rugby? After the loss to Wales, England Rugby were forced to put out a statement calling out some ‘fans’ who had abused members of the team online.
The WRU followed suit, expressing their disappointment at the social media abuse directed at the England players, and at sections of the media.
The latter was a reference to the Twitter messages received by Sonja McLaughlan following her post-match interview of Owen Farrell. Apparently they reduced her to tears, and you have to wonder what pleasure her tormentors got from that.
All she did was ask Farrell to comment on the performance of the referee, which everyone could see was a long way below the standard required. It seemed simple enough to me: she had to ask the questions, but she probably knew that Farrell was sharp enough not to answer and risk a hefty fine or a ban.
Mclaughlan was simply doing her job: she’d be accused of being soft if she didn’t ask, and then she gets criticised for asking – damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t. You have to wonder whether there wasn’t a misogynystic element at play – Maggie Alphonsi commented recently on her experience of that.
Everyone knows that social media can be a bit of a cesspool, but it seems to be getting worse. One of the Twitter rugby presences for the past few years, #rugbyunited, closed its doors last Wednesday, with its owners disenchanted with the way that rugby has changed. It was a mixture of things: obviously the anonymous trolls were a big part of it, but also what they describe as the ‘gotcha culture’, where people search out a clip or a still that they then use to condemn someone.
On Saturday there was a clip of Ellis Genge not clapping the Welsh players off the pitch, and it resulted in him receiving death threats! Obviously they weren’t real, but still, what’s that got to do with rugby’s values? There are other pictures of him shaking hands with the Welsh players after the match in the normal way, but they didn’t fit the trolls’ agenda.
It would be easy to try to excuse this by saying lockdown pressures have played their part, but this isn’t a new phenomenon – it happened with New Zealand fans and Wayne Barnes back in 2007 after the All Blacks’ loss to France, but the pace of online abuse has picked up substantially since then.
One of the best things about club rugby is its tolerant atmosphere. If you’re wearing your club’s replica shirt and you go to an away match, you can sit anywhere and it’s long odds against you feeling uncomfortable. If something untoward is said, then almost certainly there will be self-policing with the offender having the facts of rugby life explained to them.
The Premiership clubs’ supporters’ websites have their occasional mad moment when someone goes over the top, generally after a loss when people have had a few beers, or a referee has supposedly cost their team the win, but never to the extent we see after internationals.
The only reason I can suggest for this is the different audiences at club and international rugby. For years people have argued that the Six Nations must stay on terrestrial television because of the huge numbers of viewers it attracts. However, the bigger the audience, the more likely it is there will be some who just don’t get rugby’s values, and for whom their team winning is more important than anything else, even common decency.
The obvious answer is to make everyone on social media use their own name rather than an alias they can hide behind, but the likes of Twitter will never agree to that.
Here’s a suggestion that might be worth trying: make a short video with the captains of each team explaining and promoting rugby’s values, and asking fans not to let their country down by being abusive on social media.
Show this before the kick-off of every Six Nations game and then straight after the match, and see whether it makes a difference. Surely it’s worth a try?
“Make everyone on social media use their own name”