Boozing Baabaas blight on the game
Alcohol-soaked antics encourage young men to make horrendous decisions, just as the Chiefs did during their infamous night out, writes Gregor Paul
Pat Lam may have done for booze what the 1990s cult hit film Trainspotting did for heroin. The former Blues coach, in his capacity as Barbarians coach last week, managed to glorify the fact his players had such a monumental time on the sauce that they were still half cut at training.
He revealed this with a big smile, a complicit look at star player Chris Ashton next to him and no doubt a few smirks and sniggers from the listening media who, judging by the way it has been reported, thought it was quite sensationally ace that the Barbarians got themselves categorically drunk.
It’s funny, not so much haha but peculiar, that there is such contradiction when it comes to sitting in judgment of rugby and its confused relationship with alcohol.
No one, it seems, wants to acknowledge the Jekyll and Hyde reactions to the same behaviour.
There was universal indignation two years ago when the Chiefs’ endof-season shindig ended in alcoholfuelled disgrace. They got together, drank themselves stupid and then abused — verbally and physically — a stripper, with one player also guilty of making homophobic slurs against a bystander.
Here was a rugby team pilloried for their sense of entitlement that it was their right, obligation even, to honour an age-old tradition of farewelling a season with a small tanker of ale.
It was a disgrace, everyone said, that teams could still think that institutionalised drinking was acceptable; that it was okay to endorse a culture of excess and then justify it under the euphemism of boys letting off steam.
In stunning contrast, there has only been a kind of nudge-nudge, wink-wink response to the heavy drinking culture of the Barbarians.
Somehow their insistence in observing the team’s age-old culture of getting hard on the booze is the acceptable face of excess. It’s funny apparently, haha rather than peculiar, when players get horribly drunk and then beat England.
Funny because that says more about the demise of Eddie Jones’ English team than it does about the conduct of the Barbarians. What a hoot, guzzling it down large for a few nights in the name of ritual bonding.
How else could a disparate group of international players get to know one another better than a colossal session on the booze?
No doubt there was some vomiting to break the ice. Probably one of the Barbarians slumped off to bed early or had to be put to bed to create a legend for themselves within the group; earn a nickname for life and immediate acceptance for heroic feats at the bar.
And without question, there would have been peer pressure — real and subliminal — to ensure that anyone reluctant was swept to the bar, had their arm literally twisted and gullet opened and was made to
do their bit to avoid being accused of the greatest sin of all . . . not being one of the boys.
The good guys — the group who paid homage to tradition, who were undeterred by the politicalcorrectness-gone-mad lobby, showed rugby teams can be trusted to plough on with the serious business of getting hammered without letting themselves down.
But it is nonsense to condemn one team for heavy institutionalised drinking and chuckle along with the other.
It’s only good luck that the Barbarians didn’t end up doing the same abhorrent things as the Chiefs because, newsflash, when a group of young men are off their faces, feeding off each other’s sense of invincibility, they tend to not be the most rational types.
Drinking was the core of the problem at the Chiefs and hence what the Barbarians did was every bit as rotten as the Chiefs and every bit as dangerous in regard to encouraging young men to make horrendous decisions and yet it seems the majority view is we witnessed a classic celebration and promotion of rugby’s lost values.