 Old boys of the empire rugby nations are often charicatured as red-faced buffoons in blazers with wire badges, but elsewhere the game has a different feel, a stubborn history of social dissent and non-conformism.
In Italy, Benito Mussolini re-branded rugby as palla ovale, deciding it was an evolution of the classic Roman games feninda and harpastum. This new and frankly surprising Italian pedigree qualified the game to serve as a vehicle for fascist unity, and by 1927 rugby had its own propaganda committee. Palla ovale was going to revitalize Italian masculinity while teaching the subjugation of the individual to the needs of the group.
Rugby wouldn’t oblige. Despite the team framework, the game has always favoured individualism, from the moment in 1823 when William Webb Ellis first picked up the ball ‘with a fine disregard for the rules.’ Disobedience is at the source. Continue reading Che on a Dart Down the Blindside: Times Notebook
 Men and women all over the world would like to be fearless, tough, stoical, and accepted into an amiably like-minded team that wants and needs to work together. It’s not just New Zealanders. This explains why the game of rugby is spreading, and the less established rugby nations growing stronger.
Different countries take the universal rugby values and shape them in different ways, and Japan is a good example. Watch closely the next time a Japanese player is replaced during a match. He will turn after crossing the white line and bow to the opposition, to his team-mates, to the pitch itself. This is a ritual familiar from martial arts – the rugby player is saluting his large open-air dojo. Continue reading Samurai Rugby: The Way of the Warrior: Times Notebook
 Visitors to this year’s Rugby World Cup will notice, at least during daylight hours, that the natives are speaking a foreign language. This is the first tournament hosted by a non-English-speaking nation, and in its rugby vocabulary France insists that the game is more than muscles and bish-bosh, even at scrum-time.
Le scrum is not a word that rugbymen across the Channel decided to adopt. They could have done so, alongside le drop, but for the heart of the battle they revived instead la mêlée, a word last used in a competitive context in the 11th century. In the medieval period la mêlée was used to describe collisions of courtly knights in mock battles. Plus ça change. In rugby, too, elite specimens of French manhood display skill and courage while risking injury. They strive at a contest invested with ancient virtues such as honour, loyalty, perseverance, self-control and, once the lists are over, courtesy and hospitality.
English-speaking rugby arrives at a similar place by way of 19th-century muscular Christianity, but the vive la différence is in the detail. The troubadours who immortalised the original mêlées first emerged in Languedoc, one of France’s most passionate rugby regions. Among other chivalric ideals, these singing, drinking raconteurs also popularised notions of courtly love, and the French language allows modern rugby knights to compete for their own aloof and highly valued elle, the ball itself.
For “ball”, footballers in France kick about le ballon. La balle is more commonly chased by rugbymen, especially in the South, and the feminine noun more accurately suits a Gallic idea that the unpredictable, infuriating rugby ball, never bouncing in the expected direction, has to be female. She’s unreliable, desirable, valuable, dangerous. Elle, elle, elle, they say, and of course they’re talking with reverence about the ball.
It’s the shape of this ball that has led to another, newer term, L’Ovalie. This refers to an entire rugby-shaped world-view. L’Ovalie is life through oval-framed spectacles, with the game at the centre of a robust, good-humoured, staunch, well-fed, half-cut attitude of romanticised independence. L’Ovalie appeals to the oppositional instincts in the French soul that have always been well served by rugby – oval against round, villages against towns, the South West against Paris, and, in the international arena, Francophones against the global Anglophone conspiracy.
Rugby union needs the teams that don’t speak English. Without them, the sport can look like an old boys’ gathering of ageing Home Nations and bullying former colonies, all with a patronising disdain for anyone who can’t immediately find a rhyme for rugger.
Sadly for the French, their first match on home soil was against the other nonEnglish speaking country to have made serious international progress. Merde.
 I’ve been trying to remember what happened on the school’s first overseas rugby tour, to France in 1984. And despite serious effort and middle-aged habit, I can’t honestly claim that things were better in the old days.
Spending a week in a disused police barracks outside Toulouse was not many people’s idea of fun, even then. Nor do I imagine, back in the twentieth century just as now, that many nutritionists or tourist board officials would have approved our welcoming dinner of boiled horse. There was also the challenge of braving deepest French rugby country with masters-in-charge who were experts in English and Chemistry.
Perhaps it was linguistic confusion, then, which had us playing local youth teams for whom everyone was eligible as long as they’d once been a youth. And finally, in the last and climactic game of our week-long tour, it’s hard to forget that we were marched off the pitch shortly after half-time to save us from bodily harm.
Strewth. It was a fabulous trip. So much so that after University I made my way back to France to play in the Championnat, an ambition first seeded in the bloodied mud of Toulouse. I discovered, thanks to that tour, that there was a wider world of rugby where I wanted to spend more time.
I loved the difference of it. By the end of the week, we had encountered many of the intriguing mysteries of French rugby. It turned out, unlike in Radley College Shop, that shorts came in other colours than navy or white. The first team we played were kitted out in eggshell-blue, the second all in yellow. The French teams were already so sponsored and glamorous they gave a glimpse of what rugby would one day become.
Even the balls were a novelty, only previously seen on the BBC at the Parc des Princes – the Wallaby leather balls with black tips, symbolic of all that was exotic and other about the French game. They had dugouts for the managers; they had managers. And we played every match under floodlights, for most of us a new experience.
That pioneering tour was not pre-season, but in the week between the end of term and Christmas. It was therefore a reward of sorts, though in many ways a rugby tour is like a variation on the old joke about the army. Travel the world, meet interesting people, and get beaten up by them. For those of us who were leaving after 7th term exams, it was an introduction to what the adult world of non-public school rugby might have to offer.
Rain, mostly. Torrential rain every day of the week. That was the first offering, but as Toulouse was a kind of pilgrimage nobody expected it to be easy. The pilgrimage idea came from Mr Waller, backs coach and rugby visionary, who was an early disciple of Pierre Villepreux, the former French full-back putting his innovative theories into practice at Stade Toulousain. These included heretical notions such as the mobility of prop forwards and the obligation of three-quarters to ruck and maul.
We played three times in a week, and I can’t remember whether we won or lost. I do remember how we played the game: fast and wide, converts of Radley’s honorary French flairiste, Monsieur Walleur. We soon discovered, however, that Villepreux’s ideas had been adopted at Radley College before they’d reached the Toulouse Colts.
For the final match of our tour, rain had closed the main Toulouse stadium. We were relocated to an outside pitch made primarily of water and gravel, the puddles silver in the floodlights, but for our first try we ignored the weather and sprung the rush defence with a long, unplanned cut-out pass to winger Tom Johnson. I’ll never forget it because I passed it. I was under the Villepreux-Waller spell. Everything was possible.
It was at the back of the next line-out that the Toulouse Number 8, the ball long gone, turned towards Chris Sheasby and calmly bopped him on the nose. It was entirely pre-meditated, almost apologetic, but from then on all sixteen forwards were repeatedly forgetting the ball to experiment with mayhem and violence. The backs did the double teapot and watched – at least no-one important was going to get hurt.
Can’t remember who won the fighting, either, though our mobile prop forwards were much better at running away. It was when our giant second-row Julian Beck started getting really angry that Mr Johnson decided to call a halt. Touring is partly about an encounter with real life, but you can have too much of a good thing.
Or can you? Late into the night, after the game, we were in town watching the Toulouse front-row bind together and rush aluminium garage doors with their heads. I’d never seen anything like it.
And we did in fact get to meet the legendary M. Villepreux. Before that fated final bust-up, we had lunch with the opposition. Now, there’s a hoary old story in rugby, nearly always associated with clubs touring in France. Both sides sit down to a slap-up meal, with wine a go-go, and then when it comes to game-time an entirely different home fifteen brightly take the field. I was recently assured by a younger OR that this had happened to us on our tour to France.
I’d love it to be true, but I doubt it is. That meal was more like a last supper, all of us very nervous. I remember a long table with, at the centre, Pierre Villepreux offering sermons on the penultimate man and the killer inside pass. Unfortunately, for those of us not taking French A-level, the guru might just as well have been talking Hebrew.
No such problems await in New Zealand, but hopefully other, equally stimulating adventures. I congratulate Niall Murphy and his squad on their ambitious choice of destination, and I can only admire a club that has held fast to the values of overseas touring after such an inauspicious beginning. May your lives be enhanced and your memories enriched! Allez les Rouges!
Munster Munched
Heineken Cup Quarter Final 2007
 red, white, grey, blue army Yup, it’s on. You the Munster faithful have the tradition, the genial company, the unyielding quest for (forward-based) excellence. But I suspect the real reason Munster is most people’s second favourite European team lies with the Irish Pub.
It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, a Paddy Foley’s or a Molly Malone’s or a plain old Irish Pub will be showing the Munster games. Support Edinburgh or Calvisano if you like (and I’ve a soft spot for both of them) but you’ll never get to see them on the telly abroad or, for that matter, in the knock-out stages of the Heineken Cup.
For the European Cup quarter final 2007, I’m a Gloucester supporter in Strasbourg, so naturally I’m in The Irish Times thirty minutes before kick-off to cheer on the reds. My second-favourite team. At first, this doesn’t seem a popular way of spending a wet Friday night in central Europe. The pub is mostly empty except for some confused French couples who’ve come in for a pint of Guinness and a slice of Ireland. They’re watching Ireland play cricket against England on the big screen, and thinking hurling isn’t half the game it used to be. Mind you, the changes must have worked or it wouldn’t have become so popular in Guyana.
The UCC student behind the bar flicks over to the Sky preamble at Stradey Park. It’s amazing. The Red Army have taken over the stadium. Ah, no. Though at this distance I’m not sure I can tell the difference between red and scarlet. Maybe in Llanelli they’re trained to know the difference from birth.
Before long, my Strasbourg pal Ashley, Cork born and bred, comes in with his wife Tara. Asked to write something about the match for Red Alert, I’d wanted Ashley to be more of a mad Munster fan than he actually is.
‘You’re not even wearing the jersey.’ I say, immediately disappointed as he approaches the bar in muted Euro smart-casual.
‘The jersey? Haven’t even got a proper accent anymore,’ Ashley says, though he does still have a proper regional thirst. ‘My six-year-old daughter’s got the shirt,’ he says, taking the head off the evening’s first pint, ‘but when you’re away from the homeland things can go a bit pear-shaped. She supports Biarritz.’
For dramatic effect, I wanted him to be the stereotype of a Munsterman, crying if Munster lost and buying us all drinks if they won. In fact, it’s his wife Tara who’s genuinely into the rugby, and she’s from Belfast. And even though Ashley and Tara are doing more for the cause of Irish harmony than, say, Trevor Brennan, I soon find out that the Ulster/Munster thing was never likely to cause any problems. They’re united forever in an eternal dislike of Leinster.
I’m quickly brought up to date on the internal workings of Munster rugby. Limerick provides the soul while Cork provides the spokespeople. It’s ‘Stab City’ for the blood and guts; cosmopolitan, sophisticated, intellectual Cork for everything else. I can’t say for sure, but there may have been some prejudice at work here.
But the match, the match. The Sky commentators mention that tickets in West Wales have been changing hands for ridiculous prices. Which seems strange from where we’re sitting, because at the Irish Times in Strasbourg you can watch it for free from a nice seat at the bar. The Munster clamour is provided by nine students from University College Cork. They’re on an Erasmus year in Strasbourg, and in the even-handed spirit of that wise Dutch humanist they work behind the bar while also providing most of the custom. The girls are drinking that old Carrigaline standard – white Russian with mint – and the lads are in their Munster away jerseys because this year for them it’s always an away game.
These jerseys are blue and red. Munster run on to the big screen in grey. This is perhaps the first sign that things are not going to turn out well.
After nearly two decades of the Red Army marauding through Europe, this ghost-like grey requires a certain adjustment, especially for a neutral primed to support the team in red. Though not that much of an adjustment. Concentrate on the shorts and socks. Black with white piping – that must be Munster, the same colour as the drinks.
Llanelli seem happy to exploit this unexpected crisis of identity. They’re in the red and right from the kick-off they play like Munster, and have their first score on the board within five minutes.
Ashley decides we need more atmosphere, so rings up Kevin and Robby who are sure to be watching. They’re out. Llanelli score again. We were hoping for a re-run of 2006 glory and end up watching a horror movie. Nightmare on Cullen Street. May even be a sequel.
‘C’mon Ronan’ the UCC students groan, and the Sky stats screen is now reporting back on Munster’s rare visits to Llanelli’s 22. It seems an odd way to describe what’s going on, as if Munster just popped down there for tea. From what we’ve seen, it’s not quite as friendly as that.
As half time approaches the Red Army in Stradey seem to have forgotten their responsibility to those of us watching on TV. So it’s bad on the pitch, but you guys in the stand look every miserable point of the 17-0 down at the break. We can see you don’t believe, like the guy with the red Cork City Council hat. He’s had enough.
‘Breast-fed shovels,’ Ashley says, but I ruin it by being foreign and needing an explanation. ‘Leaning on the shovels, breasts on the handles. Best-fed shovels in all Ireland.’
Ah yes, the unmistakable voice of the Guinness talking. Not that at this time of night it needs much encouragement, but the Guinness now decides it’s time to start a debate about whether Alix Popham dyes his hair. The consensus is that it’s sunnier in Wales than most people realize, but his sideburns are definitely fake, stuck on with Velcro.
Seasoned supporters will recognize that talking rubbish is a valid and effective way to ease the pain, and already by the sixty-sixth minute the Munster fans in Strasbourg have become magnanimous in defeat.
‘A Llanelli masterclass,’ everyone agrees. ‘Llanelli look really good.’
And they do. For those of you at Stradey Park it seems too much to bear, many of you adopting the crash position with hands on red hats. Even in Strasbourg, it can’t be easy for a true believer, and one of the students disappears into the streets of Strasbourg, where the weather has come out in sympathy and is lashing it down. Poor old Fionan in his outdated Munster away shirt. He’s no doubt out there bashing his head against a fourteenth century beam in the pretty medieval streets of Strasbourg, and cursing the day coal was ever discovered in the Welsh valleys, colliery managers were recruited from English public schools, and rugby balls were brought to a region full of strong fierce men with a point to prove who created a proud sporting tradition that lasts to this day. Dammit. It could all have been so different. No coal in Wales and Munster would now be safe in the semi-finals.
Back in the bar, the Munster lads have explanations. An Englishman at this point might be saying oh dear, oh dear (or words to that effect sometimes spelt with an f), but the Munstermen are muttering O’Connell, O’Connell, and the difference the big man might have made. The grey jerseys come in for a bit of a pasting, and grumbles about Manchester United trying the same thing and losing 6-1 to Southampton. Players couldn’t see each other, apparently.
A guitarist starts up with Knocking on Heaven’s Door, the TV switches back to hurling from the Caribbean, and for the next few hours I find out more about Gaelic football than I possibly needed to know. We also discuss Clonakilty, snow on the beach, and squirrel stew, while discovering that Guinness and pastis is much under-rated as a mixture of drinks.
By the time we leave, in this city of pavement cafes and sauerkraut restaurants, we unanimously agree that this business of going to a pub on a rainy Friday night and watching rugby and drinking stout and yakking with strangers is an idea who’s time has come. You should try it in Ireland sometime. I’ve a feeling it might catch on.
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About Me
About Richard Beard
I'm a novelist and non-fiction writer, and Director of The National Academy of Writing in London. As time goes by I'm gradually transferring the material from the old site (stories, articles, squibs) into the categories tabbed above. There's information on each of my books, with summaries and reviews, and now that I'm permanently back in the country I'm available for events and readings. Email me using Contact, below. I'll get back to you.
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