Times Column 19/03/05

The main event this weekend in Hong Kong is the IRB World Cup Sevens.  Less well-known is the fact that over the last few years Hong Kong’s international week of rugby has been developing a fringe, like the Edinburgh arts festival.  While the main tournament can be spectacular, it can also drag as surely as choreographed fireworks and pipers in the castle.  For the full, glorious range of rugby achievement, look to the wonders of the fringe.

Wednesday and Thursday at the Hong Kong Indoor Sports Hall saw a three-match series of International Wheelchair rugby, in which the New Zealand Wheel Blacks took on England.  Over the same period at the Hong Kong Football Club, 24 teams from fourteen countries competed in a 10’s tournament featuring former stars such as Neil Jenkins and Toutai Kefu.  Across the harbour, Kowloon RFC’s Securicor Kowloon Rugby Fest celebrated its fourth year as a 10’s tournament for touring sides eager to maintain the traditional imbalance between socialising and playing.  True to the ancient spirit of the game, anyone can simply turn up with their boots and join the pick-up team. 

For those unfamiliar with the abridged version of rugby called 10’s, there are ten players on each side, five backs and five forwards, who play for ten minutes each way.  More accommodating than 7’s, the short and fat can play a full part, as can any other adjective keen to pull on a jersey, be it lanky, heavy, light-weight, thin, dim or downright cowardly.  10’s retains the inclusive virtues of fifteen-a-side rugby, and also the tactical variety.  To get technical for a moment, it’s possible and sometimes desirable to stick it up your jumper in 10’s, while the open spaces are always there for the jinkers and outright speedsters. 

The first ever 10’s tournament was held in 1967 in Kuala Lumpur, where the Combined Old Boys Rugby Association (COBRA) were looking for a way to encourage young Malaysians to continue playing rugby after leaving school.  Since then, 10’s has spread throughout Asia, piecing together a thriving circuit that now includes tournaments in Manila, Bangkok, Guam, Bali, and Jakarta.  A new tournament, hoping to share in the Asian-led fun, took place for the first time this year at Bondi in Australia.  If these destinations sound like a paradise dot-to-dot, then that’s an added extra once the sun goes down on the fierce contests that 10’s seems to generate.

There’s no similar popular circuit for 7’s rugby, not even a social fringe event in Hong Kong.  The IRB might like to ponder this, especially since they’ve chosen 7’s as rugby’s vehicle into the Olympics.  Hoping to impress the IOC with the global nature of the game, the IRB like to point out that in 7’s Kenya have twice beaten Australia.  This is great.  Any country beating Australia at any sport should be encouraged.  However, despite their 7’s heroics Kenya are no closer to mounting a challenge at the real-life, fifteen-man RWC France 2007. 

In fact, 7’s is a severely limited means of developing rugby, because however good it may sometimes be to watch, it’s almost impossible for an ordinary mortal to play.  The youth and pace required are insurmountable obstacles to all but the young and quick, and rugby was never intended to be so restrictive.  If Kenya could develop expertise in 10’s, they’d have a much firmer foundation from which to step up to the full game, which could then genuinely aspire to a global reach.

In a straight contest between the two shortened versions of rugby, 10’s is the clear winner.  Infinitely more fun to play, 10’s is also better to watch because it has the variety that 7’s lacks.  In Europe, 10’s rugby lags behind its increasing popularity in Asia.  Not to worry, though.  When the inaugural Hong Kong Sevens asked the RFU for help, back in 1975, the Asian upstarts were refused, just as twelve years later the RFU questioned the merits of a Rugby World Cup.  10’s is moving fast on a wave of popular enjoyment.  The absence of official support is simply rugby’s traditional way of confirming that it’s surely the next big thing.

the walrus

Times Column 5/02/05

In South Africa, prop forward is the position to play.  The prop is ox-strong and stubborn.  He represents qualities that South Africans traditionally value, and when the Springboks have a charismatic front-row they invariably prosper.  More than that: in the unforgiving arena of Test rugby, an archetypal Bok prop like Os Du Randt can make a virtue out of traditional perceptions of national character.

In the days when props were fat and wingers were thin, it was easier to imagine that each position attracted a different type of personality.  The Welsh treasured their nimble and visionary fly-halves, implacable Merlins in the best traditions of mystic Welsh folklore.  The Scots prized their ferocious mongrel breakaways, one among many traits they exported to New Zealand.  The All Blacks have perked up no end behind the roaming and destructive Richie McCaw, and the Scots cherish the same refusal to accept any cause as lost. 

For England, the key player is the lock-forward, the team’s immovable heart of oak, evident in a distinguished line of strong-armed stoics from Johnson through Dooley and Beaumont back to Wavell Wakefield.  The solid second-row is where England will always turn when things start to go wrong. 

These faintly spurious assumptions about national character used to provide much of the spice to the 6 Nations.  The French, for example, have always understood that the flair part of French flair is born in the centre. 

In a recently-published book on the Boniface brothers, who made up a sparkling French midfield partnership in the 1960’s, Denis Lalanne assumes that God is a centre three-quarter. The devil, on the other hand, is half Rugby League and half Australian.  Lalanne thanks God for the space-making genius of the Boniface boys (in over 300 pages), and all other French centres made in His image.  Evidence of divinity translates into an immoderate taste for attack, and an instinctive knowledge of what to tell the forwards: ‘Push!  We’ll do the rest.’

This year, France can play New Zealander Tony Marsh and South African bruiser Brian Liebenburg in the midfield.  Though both fine players, neither is the kind of Gallic craftsman of an opening craved by the French rugby soul.  For some, it’s only a number on the back of a jersey, but true believers know better.  I shall therefore predict the outcome of the 6 Nations by the current plight of each talismanic jersey.

The French are doomed.  The good news for Wales, however, is Stephen Jones at number 10.  If not quite a Merlin, he’s close enough that Wales may even win some matches.  The Scottish had high hopes for the emergence of an old-fashioned open-side terrier in Donnie MacFayden.  Now that MacFayden is out injured, the Scots look as unlikely candidates for glory as at any time since they last had a genuine home-grown breakaway.  Far too long ago.  England have quality locks in abundance, some of whom can’t even make the bench – it might turn out to be a better few weeks than anyone dares expect.

The Italians, with a shorter history in the tournament, are yet to establish which position best matches the unique spirit of their game, and so feeds the national morale.  This may explain why they sometimes lose focus on the pitch.  Strangely enough, Irish rugby too is missing its own emblematic position.  Instead of focussing on one area, the Irish expression of national character has traditionally been to spread the red mist equally in all areas. 

As it happens, this year the Irish have superior players in all the positions coveted by others. They have formidable English-style locks and inventive French centres, a pair of Number 10’s as wily as any Welshman, and in Johnny O’Connor and Denis Leamy two young breakaways stolen-at-birth from across the Irish Sea.

If the Irish can overcome a slightly different rugby tradition, of slipping up when all seems won, then they won’t need a particular jersey with a distinct emotional and historic significance.  That honour will be given to the whole team, all 22 of them, to be treasured collectively for ever.

Times Column 22/01/05

Horse racing is the sport of kings, football the beautiful game.  In Australia and New Zealand, in a phrase less often heard over here, rugby is ‘the game they play in heaven’.  It’s also the game they play in Chile and Pakistan, and the best way to keep up to speed with rugby in the Moroccan championship, or the Nigerian national squad, is via heavensgame.com.

This non-profit making website was set up in 2002 with the brilliantly simple idea, not yet on the IRB’s agenda, of treating each rugby nation equally.  A 6-Nations clash between England and France was deemed no more important than a review of the second round of the Spanish Cup.  Each story as it arrived became the main story until the next one came along.

Heavensgame soon had a global audience, attracting over 1.7 million people in 2004.  News from Guam and Slovenia was only the half of it.  There were interviews with the Danish Ladies coach and a Brazilian referee and the Kazakhstan left wing.  The site also offered a unique service for putting players in touch with suitable clubs wherever in the world they intended to travel.  For props with itchy feet or wanderlusting wingers, of whatever standard, rugby and heavensgame.com provided a passport to instant community and friendship.

The views, features and information were provided by a network of volunteer contributors, but co-ordinated in his spare time by one man, 32-year-old Jeremy Beynon.  In a previous life, Beynon had been a full-back from Llanmorlais on the Gower.  He played for Penclawdd, Vardre, and finally Bonymaen, before re-imagining himself in his late-twenties as a systems contractor on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

It was Beynon’s brief stint with the Beacon Hill club in Boston that gave him a ‘real insight into the passion that exists for rugby outside the established rugby countries.  Each Saturday morning, the whole club (3 teams) would turn up to mark out a rugby pitch, put up the goal posts, and generally perform all the other tasks I used to take for granted in Wales.’

Beynon takes his evangelism seriously. As heavensgame grew in popularity, he bartered advertising space against kit for developing rugby nations.  The referees in Finland, Hungary and Bosnia are now all wearing jerseys provided via the site.  The Bosnian RFU and Mexico will be receiving more kit soon. 

This is the kind of game they’d truly play in heaven: not the grasping and repetitive global telesport of the Tri-Nations and the IRB, but inclusive, diverse, and based on the rich interchange of like-minded people with a shared and consuming passion.  Unfortunately, Beynon’s generous impartiality was about to land him in trouble.

By combining the three words heaven, USA and Israel (rugby in both countries was covered by heavensgame) some limited-interest hackers arrived at a truly dim-witted conclusion.  They attacked heavensgame.com, destroyed the database and back up, and splashed out a spew of spam e-mail about Iraq, Afghanistan and the tribal injustices of the Israeli state.  Important though these issues are, they may well be absent even from religious ideas of heaven, let alone a rugby one.  The last attack was on Christmas day, when every feature and story on the site was lost. 

Down-hearted but not defeated, Beynon has re-launched with more secure software.  It will take a little while for the glory of heavensgame.com to re-accumulate, the sheer variety and charm of the information and people his site has mined from the lesser-known corners of the rugby world.  The new era begins in earnest from February, with opinions already scheduled from the the captain of the Arabian Gulf national team, a capped member of the Malta squad, and the Tongan Rugby Union CEO.

As for that original quote, which may have caused offence to the hackers.  It doesn’t promise everyone a game of rugby in heaven.  Only ‘they’ will be playing, the people who actually get there.  The saintly Jeremy Beynon can therefore look forward to a runabout with Inga Tuigemala and Jason Robinson.  Everyone else will just have to wait, and hope, whatever their politics or religion, that rugby’s heaven is as tolerant and welcoming as its version of earth.

Times Column 8/01/05

The New Year in the Zurich Premiership kicked off with a sell-out.  At Worcester, Bath, Gloucester, Northampton, Harlequins and Newcastle, 64,000 supporters watched live club rugby on January 1st and 2nd.  This followed excellent attendances in Christmas week, when Leeds Tykes doubled a previous record crowd to over 14,000 for their clash with Jonny Wilkinson. 

Jonny won, with three penalties and a drop goal, but Leeds are getting closer to that impressive Headingley capacity of 18,000.  To help get them there, it can’t hurt that later this month the England team will be training with the Tykes’ sister club and current Super League Champions, the Rhinos.  So it’s all aboard the England charabanc to Leeds, because if Andy Robinson hopes to learn something from Rugby League, he has to travel to the heartlands. 

Elsewhere, Rugby League isn’t much in evidence.  The BBC still covers the odd match, like the recent Tri-nations series, but the game’s presence in the national consciousness is as hazy as a memory of Eddie Waring on the Mike Yarwood Show.  For an accurate indication of how far the profile of Rugby League has slipped, imagine Alistair McGowan on Christmas prime-time in the role of Ray French.  Or Exhibit B, for those in need of further persuasion: a rugby league player as BBC Sports Personality of the Year.  Not even J.K.Rowling could imagine that one.

League has suffered from shifting its elite season to the summer, when the floating TV fan has sunnier satellite sports like cricket.  There’s also the lack of genuine international competition, with three teams able to compete but only Australia allowed to win.  Add to these obstacles an absence of stars who transcend their sport, a perceived bias in the media, and a geographical stubbornness that one hundred years of sincere effort has not much managed to budge.  And now the imminent arrival of Andy Robinson.

Union has already plucked some of the tastier morsels from the living body – the finest home-grown coaches like Phil Larder and Dave Ellis, and stand-out individual performers like Jason Robinson.  Now the vultures are circling above Headingley eyeing the technical lifeblood – the tactics and strategies that make the two codes different, and therefore attractive in different ways. 

Intent on the pitch, Union risks missing a much more valuable lesson, and one which is infinitely harder to stow in the swag-bag.  Twenty-four hours before the record-breaking Leeds Tykes vs Newcastle Falcons, Leeds Rhinos attracted 13,238 for an out-of-season friendly against Wakefield.  The Rhinos have an average attendance at Headingley of over 16,000, and these Rugby League fans keep on coming despite their game’s ongoing difficulties, not least England’s unmissable victory in last year’s World Cup. 

Nationwide, the League supporters are many times fewer, but consistently they’re twice as vocal.  Earlier this season, for example, Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times did a webchat after the resignation of Clive Woodward.  There were surely a great many Red Rose supporters with questions for that madcap Clive of ours, but the organised and loyal League fans indisputably arrived firstest with the mostest.  Ninety percent of the questions were about the urgent League issues of the day.  The Sunday Times had asked for questions about rugby, and that’s what they got. 

In the tiny Union grounds, many of them more saucepan than cauldron, the RFU and the Premiership would do well to nurture cores of support as fiercely loyal and organised as these.  As it is, nobody yet knows whether the current upsurge in attendance is permanent, or as prone to deflation as a Jonny Wilkinson bicep. 

What is certain is that 13,000 people will turn out for a Leeds Rhinos close-season kickabout while Union hyper-ventilates about attendances half that size among the elite of the Zurich Premiership.  Never mind the angles of running, this is what Union should be learning from League – how to embed a club in its local community, how to attract families, and how to inspire the same phenomenal loyalty in bad times as well as good.

Only then can we be sure that the numbers currently turning up for the Zurich Premiership will be back.  Not just once or twice during the holidays, but game after game, season after season, into a bright sporting future where an ageing Alistair McGowen does a cracking John Inverdale.

 Times Column 18/12/04

Not so long ago, Christmas would have been easier for everyone if rugby players had hung up their boots and taken up golf.  Finding a present for a golfer is easy.  You can spend less than 10 pounds for the next thirty years and still not reach the second shelf of pitch-mark repairers.  A rugby-player, on the other hand, needs a gum-shield.  Best get that from the dentist, not Santa. 

And that’s it.  Until recently, there was simply nothing to buy.  Rugby union was a game first, and a set of values second.  And to protect those values, it was sincerely believed that rugby couldn’t survive Bill Beaumont putting his name on a book.  Commercialism would wilt rugby’s soul, which ought never become a commodity for profit.

So much for a hundred years of harrumphing.  The RFU now has the Rugby Store at Twickenham, and England Rugby Clotted Cream Fudge has not led directly to the downfall of the sport.  It has, however, made Christmas presents for rugby-nuts that much easier to find.  Take your pick from the full range of branded gifts and souvenirs – a Champions souvenir plate, England fridge magnets, a ceramic lion fly-half in the pose of Jonny Wilkinson. 

The novelty of using rugby to sell product seems to have led to some confusion about what rugby as a brand might actually signify.  A Christmas-shopper at the Rugby Store will find a glass decanter costing one hundred pounds.  That same shopper, in the same shop, is then offered a box-set of Twickers Knickers, containing one pair of lady’s white briefs and one red thong (£3.40).  For the larger supporter, these are possibly a reminder of how hard it is to get in to Twickenham.

The RFU is not alone in wondering quite where to pitch its new-era products.  Christmas in Australia, for example, will this year be brightened by a special edition yellow and green George Gregan sponge-bag. Discounted merchandise is also still available from the 2003 World Cup, and every Official Licensed Product carries the IRB’s clumsy attempt to bridge the past and the future.  On the back of every label, the IRB claims that the purchase of this particular key-ring or baseball cap is ‘assisting to develop and promote the game of rugby around the world.’  More like a donation, then, as if rugby was a slightly more brutal version of the World Wildlife Fund. 

To avoid this daftness, and if you have a rugby player to please this Christmas, you may think clothes are a safer bet.  You’d be wrong.  At one end of the market, there are screen-printed XXL T-shirts with ho-ho slogans such as Beer was Invented to Keep Props from Taking Over.  Or in Argentina: Rugby Players Eat Their Dead.

At the other end of the scale, looking to spend a bit more money, you could drive to an airport, fly to Paris, get a cab to the 6th arrondissement and buy a formal shirt with oval buttons from Franck Mesnel’s Eden Park boutique.  Mesnel, a former French centre three-quarter, has also moved into bedspreads, but even he seems a bit confused about what values rugby as a brand can bring to the world of consumer goods.  His clothes are described as élégants and  sophistiqués, yet he once used Keith Wood as a model. 

This contradiction of marketing messages comes from the breathless speed with which rugby has transformed itself into a fully functioning commercial entity.  Before 1996, the brand known as rugby union existed, and the values it stood for were fiercely protected.  However, they were never tested in the market-place, and the result has been both unexpected and revealing.  The rugby brand adds value to a vast range of diverse products, from Franck Mesnel’s Collection Femme to the skimpy red thong of a Twickers Knickers two-pack.  

This is rugby’s greatest strength, not as a brand but as a game.  It moves freely between the earthy and the exalted.  It doesn’t mean style on the boulevards of Paris, but it doesn’t mean humorous underpants at £3.99 a pair, either.  It means both together, and everything in between.  What an amazing, contradictory, inclusive sport it is. 

So Happy Christmas to one and all, with or without the knickers.