Hear the one about Mr Modest, the liar and the hypocrite?
Things we have learnt this week: Gary Neville is an extraordinary hypocrite, Rassie Erasmus is not a good liar and Owen Farrell is not used to having people say nice things about him.
To start with the most shocking revelation first as the first two above are hardly gobsmacking, but they are all somewhat interlinked.
Farrell will make his 100th Test appearance for England against New Zealand at Twickenham on Saturday evening and in a pre-match natter with journalists said he wasn’t much for paying attention to others when they talked about him.
“I’m not too good at listening to stuff about myself. The sooner we get on to it [the match] the better,” said Farrell. “You’re not used to it, are you? You’re not used to hearing people say nice things about you. A lot of it normally goes unsaid.”
Farrell presents as a fine example of the modern rugby professional 10 years and nine months after he made his debut for England — dedicated, focused, ripped and a little twitchy, both when kicking the ball and talking to anyone outside the rugby bubble. There is much to admire about him and I must confess to a grudging admiration, except, that is, when he plays against SA.
He’s armless, ain’t he? His tackle shoulder charge on André Esterhuizen in the 2018 England-Bok Test won the game for England after Angus Gardner, the Australian referee, said it was just another big hit. At 12-11 it cost the Boks the chance of a penalty to win a match in which the visitors not only outplayed England, but thanks to a comedy of errors from Malcolm Marx, also outplayed themselves.
Just an incredibly short six months later, World Rugby used the video of the Farrell hit on Esterhuizen to show when a yellow card should be awarded for a no-arms tackle. Less than a week after the Farrell hit, Rassie Erasmus made the first of his infamous videos featuring Esterhuizen hitting a tackle bag high and with no arms.
Erasmus hasn’t stopped playing video games since. In the past two weeks, a few more videos have been tweeted, pointing out refereeing errors disguised as “learnings” and “lessons”. He attended a Bok presser in Genoa this week and claimed the videos were “not about having a go at the referees. If I was having a go at the referee, well, I don’t think Wayne Barnes would make all those bad decisions. He’s No 1 in the world and has 100 Tests under the belt.
“It’s obviously something on our side we need to fix. I just want supporters to understand that. If people put a narrative to that, I can’t control it. They [the tweets] are being done for SA supporters to understand that there’s some things that some guys on the opposition side are really doing well, which we don’t understand.”
Erasmus is a damn fine coach. He’s a rubbish liar. He’s creating a narrative that the Boks are hard done by. I’ve been known to have a few digs at rugby referees myself. I may have asked why the Boks seem to get all the referees from the “arse-scratching countries”, but the France game started late and Saturday night is alright for fighting and beer.
The Erasmus plotline is that the Springboks are hard done by referees. The videos are calculated to do something, but I’m not sure what. Change the mind of referees? Get them to like the Boks a little more? Referees are mates and you can believe they are talking about the videos among themselves. A backlash is coming. Or, perhaps, it is already happening. The videos do no good, but, then, neither does following the “process” of emailing queries to World Rugby.
They took six months to respond to the Esterhuizen hit. Lord knows how long they would take to investigate what happened with that final try by France last week.
And, so, to end with Gary Neville. He will be going to the World Cup in Qatar to commentate for beIN, the staterun broadcaster. He will be taking their money, but, hey, if he comes across an issue like the ban on homosexuality, women’s rights and how they treat workers, he will certainly not be afraid to bring it up. That way, he said, he could “collaborate with these countries, and try and impact change through football.”
What tosh. When will he bring it up? In the dead air space after Harry Kane misses a shot on goal? During the wait for VAR? Qatar will be using the World Cup to present themselves as something they are not. Neville will play a huge part in that. Hypocrite.