Rugby and the rise of the ‘rip his head off’ brigade
I HAVE great admiration for rugby player Tom Wood (Mail); his recapture of his place in Eddie Jones’s England squad is well deserved. Commentators would have us believe rugby was ‘founded on confrontation’, but it has become that only in recent years. The shape of the game, with defences strung out across the pitch, has led to a ‘they shall not pass’ mindset. When was the last time you saw a try scored with the ball passed from a set scrum down the threequarter line leading to a score for a winger in the corner? At the highest level, many players are now recruited for size in their teens, rather than for abilities acquired at school and mini/ junior club levels. It has become a battering ram exercise. The women’s game more fairly represents how it should be played. They try to run round opponents rather than through them. Wood says he doesn’t know who makes the rules, but there are no ‘rules’ in rugby, only ‘laws’, clearly defined in the RFU handbook. Playing the game and refereeing it for ten years, my experience taught me that most coaches have never opened that book. I doubt if a ball has been put straight into an international scrum this century. The laws enable all who play, referee and watch to conform to unambiguous elements of the game. Reporters and TV commentators use terms which don’t exist: there is no ‘try line’; it’s the ‘goal line’, no ‘side line’, it’s the ‘touch line’, no ‘converted try’, it’s a ‘goal’, no ‘offloading’, only ‘passing’, and no ‘hit’, it’s a ‘tackle.’ Calling it a ‘hit’ only glorifies the violence of legitimate contact. When tackling, the head is a no-go area. Stiff arm tackles and grasping around the neck were routinely penalised. Tackling an opponent when their feet are off the ground has been an offence for years. The scenario Wood described, standing, waiting for a dropping ball, should never result in a red card. Mass TV coverage means a wider audience, uneducated in rugby ethos, and confrontational attitudes have spread from pitch to stands. The ‘rip his head off’ and ‘kill him’ brigade are now, sadly, increasingly in evidence.
ALAN JINKS, Swynnerton, Staffs.