I go to more football matches than rugby matches, because there are more football matches than rugby matches.
Recently on a bus, I alerted a guy that the evening’s football match had been postponed and, low and behold, a woman started up a massive discussion about namby-pamby footballers.
Erm… our local football team plays 50 League and Cup games a season, unlike the local rugby team who play about 30.
Went to the rugby tonight… one woman said it was too cold to go… one man said it didn’t matter… another man, who inevitably didn’t go to the game either, presumed I would be ‘all over’ the Six Nations tomorrow.
Incorrect squire, I’ll be at a football game, could be Association rules could be Rugby rules.
No offence meant, obvs., but football fans who identify as ‘rugby fans’ are shite, aren’t they?
I go to infinitely more rugby matches than any of them!
Are you quite sober?
I suspect they should identify as sports fans really. It would save all of the palaver.
I’ve reached 65 and I have no idea what’s going on in a game of rugby.
Rugby is the only sport in the world where the spectators don’t know the laws, the player’s don’t know the laws and the referee doesn’t know the laws.
I think we have a genuine rugby referee here on the Afterword, don’t we? Isn’t sitheref a rugby referee? Calling sitheref for a well-considered comment!
Actually, the laws of rugby are one of the few things in which I am actually very competent.
One of the very very few.
I’ve played both Rugby, and Prog Rock, and I have no idea what’s going on in either. However they are both rather harmless, despite occasionally breaking out into complicated violence. I feel that Soccer has an ability to bring out the worst in people, off the field, sadly – a bit like Britpop.
It’s like the old adage that says rugby and prog rock are both played by men with funny shaped balls.
I love rugby union.
I quite like rugby league.
I loathe association football (but I do support Leeds Utd and Allan Clarke is my hero).
You are a man of rare taste.
I find it quite strange that rugby union doesn’t have a rock soundtrack- you don’t hear the, ahem, ‘crowds’ singing Beatles songs or others adapted from the rock canon and I can’t remember any rock star talking about his or her favourite band etc.
I was born in North Wales and, up there, rugby hardly meant a thing. It was all football. There are pockets of support now but I’m fairly convinced that the hordes who gather in Cardiff for the internationals do so for the ‘event’ rather than the actual game. Hardly anyone goes to club games and the sport is on its knees, both in Wales and in other parts of the UK.
I don’t understand the game either. To me it’s an ugly game played by big ugly brutes. My old sports teacher said it was ‘a game for boys too fat for football.’ Booting the ball into the crowd and getting cheered for it? Er…yeah…
Oops. When I said that I don’t remember any ‘rock’ star talking about his or her favourite band…I meant ‘rugby’ star of course.
That’s the trouble when your thumbs are too big for your phone…
I do feel very uncomfortable in a largely white privileged crowd, supporting a largely white privileged team singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Well I loath rugby so it’s no contest.
Rugby League is a far better and simpler (these two are probably related) game than Union, and you don’t need to be eighteen stone to play it.
RU has the money though, hence the popularity.
Precisely. Rugby League is a great athletic spectacle and considerably more entertaining (and easier to grasp for newbies) than Union, but because of the lack of money it remains entrenched in a comparatively small area of the UK. League was born 130 or so years ago precisely because of the class divide, but things dont seem to changed all that much. If anything, Union going professional has made matters even harder for League.
Plenty of rugby players aren’t 18 stone, it depends what position they play. Indeed, some of the the most exciting players in the world right now are little guys, eg Bauden Barrett, Marcus Smith, Damien McKenzie, Cam Roigard, Bielle-Biarrey …
Okay not 18 stone, that’s your pack.
I’m not being snarky here, just had 5 minutes spare…
Beauden BARRETT 93 kg (14 st 9.03 lb)
Marcus Smith 83kg (13 st 0.98 lb; 182.98 lb)
Damien McKenzie 81kg (12 st 10.57 lb; 178.57 lb)
thats still quite a chunk
I like proper scrums and line outs. There are very skilful players in rugby league, but I find it relatively one dimensional.
As the hail came down on Thursday afternoon I thought to myself “thank god it’s nearly the cricket season.”
I live in a bit of town that’s right next to a league football ground and a premiership rugby ground. The football fans are generally quiet, appear sober and don’t park their cars wherever they like. You can tell when a rugby game is on as there are loads of Chelsea tractors suddenly parked in our street, the roads become a minefield of bad drivers and the pedestrian fans don’t appear to have been members of the Tufty club. Luckily (as DD points out) there are less rugby matches than football matches, as the fans often appear a bunch of entitled, hoorah Henrys.
I still mourn the 25 yard line.
It has been suggested that soccer is coke and rugger beer, wondering if that holds any traction. I refer to the drug of choice of the more troubled/troubling side of their support.
I have never indulged in the former, so have no personal experience, as well as losing interest in the game much beyond primary school. However, at a rugby (union) playing school, I had some minor aptitude. Medical school social life was centred around the bar and the hospital playing fields, down at Cobham, so it was easy to become soaked (literally) in that crowd. I have always associated rugby with getting hammered, possibly why I lost interest in the sport on qualification. (I have never regained any great interest in, actually, any sport.)
Music then reverted to the pre-uni place it held in my world, where it has stalwartly remained. (Having said, I was still the odd student who would occasionally peel off from the bar-room blitz to sidle off to concerts for my pleasure.)
I am Welsh from the rugby heartlands. I have seen my local, relatively successful, team probably 100s of times, but not for about 20 years.
Generally I think rugby is a more consistently exciting game, last week’s 6N games were all fascinating and good to watch. Most international football games are pretty tedious I find.
I do like football though and played it more, mostly informal 5-a-sides and kick arounds in various parks. Haven’t played rugby since school.
There is a current serious issue in rugby with previous head injuries causing dementia though. A law suit is pending involving many ex players, some who played at the highest level and are now suffering. This could change the game completely, they are trying to deal with it better on the pitch, but it is still very inconsistent and at the whim of the officials. Also shady practices off the field with often very short bans for players who have picked up red cards for head contact
Rugby union is traditionally an amateur game and the move to professionalism has not been a complete success. As stated above, attendances in the Welsh strongholds outside internationals are well down from the glory days and 3 historical English teams went bust a couple of years ago
Having said all that hopefully Wales can end their appalling run against the old enemy today. The U20s showed the way yesterday with a superb win to ruin the celebrations of the Grand Slam seeking English! But England will be strong favourites.
I have seen Wales play many times in person but not since 2019 when incredibly they were briefly ranked no. 1 in the world (they weren’t really the best), have seen quite a few Canada matches over the years, they are currently even worse than Wales.
“This could change the game completely, they are trying to deal with it better on the pitch, but it is still very inconsistent and at the whim of the officials. ”
https://passport.world.rugby/media/j5senlan/2303-update-head_contact_process_en.pdf
Not really. There’s a defined protocol for head contact with criteria for mitigation and exacerbation. It’s easier for the TV boys – they just need to decide if it’s a yellow card or not, and then the TRMO takes over. At my level, I get one snapshot, live, and have to run that snapshot against the protocol. Ain’t easy.
I know it’s a difficult game to officiate. But why was a deliberate headbutt by a Frenchman yesterday only a yellow? Should have been a proper red (not a 20 minute one, which is also
a ridiculous development in my opinion)
Some of the officiating in the tournament was appalling. For some teams checking every thing to find a reason to disallow a try, other tries accepted immediately. England didn’t clearly touch the ball down against Scotland, try awarded. A marginal Welsh offside that didn’t really affect anything and a brilliant try disallowed
I don’t think the officials are bent, but there often seems to be unconscious bias that favours the teams they think are most likely to win. I think rugby is the sport where it is most likely that the officials can decide who wins in the end
I think we’ll find that either Carley, Tempest, or both, goofed.
My personal feeling is that they shouldn’t have applied the head contact protocol but instead just dealt with it as an act of foul play.
Agreed
3 week ban, I think Scotland can feel very aggrieved
https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/articles/c4gmv5732meo
That’s our default sporting state…
I have been to Football, Rugby League and Rugby Union matches and have enjoyed all three.
I don’t see any need to state which is superior as a viewing spectacle, though I won’t (can’t) ever have the affinity to any rugby club of either code that the immersion of a lifetime supporting Everton has given me.
Having said that, one thing that really annoys me at Saracens (which is my nearest rugby club) is when the team emerges a voice over the PA exhorts us to show our support, then promptly drowns us out with overamplified music. It’s also annoying that when a player is getting treatment they play music so loudly, that conversation becomes extremely difficult, just at a time when it’s convenient to talk to your friends.
It’s a funny thing to start a thread here about, I just feel sorry for his fellow bus passengers. You can’t walk very far away
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand that reply.
I imagine people on the bus minding their own business and he starts telling them his opinions ranting about “no hits Clash” and accusing them of being “dodgers”
Sorry, love, this isn’t the bus to The Dire. You want the Number 47…
…they’ve got old Uncut/Mojo specials on there, and CeeDees. Etc.
Footballers can be very cool, but not the English ones. I’m thinking of Italy, Brazil, Holland (Cruyff mainly). Rugby players not so much. Those who wear rugby shirts as leisure wear I tend to think badly of. Both sports are irritatingly stop and start. Football can be glorious at it’s best though.
I hope this helps.
That said, it has to be pointed out that those grown adults who wear football shirts as leisure wear, and there are many, many more of those, need to be regarded with pity.
I wear my footy jerseys to show my support before a big game, and sometimes for a day or so after a big win. Does that count as leisurewear?
(FWIW, the word “leisurewear” is a relatively recent conjunction to create a neoglism that still gives me acute irrits.)
I got nothing against football fans wearing their team’s shirts when there’s a match on. There’ll be glad to know that, I’m sure.
I have a West Ham / Iron Maiden collaboration shirt that I’m jolly pleased to wear. No pity required.
It’s an odd boy who doesn’t like sport.
Odd for a boy, maybe, and unusual, as most boys are early brainwashed into thinking it is their duty to support a team, a side, a country. Lots of men I know have no interest in sport and I certainly don’t.
For the record, I detest most sport, playing or watching: but I can’t resist a Bonzo’s quote, in the right context…
However it “Equips a young man for society.”
I should have picked up on that, my bad. Blame it on my year as captain of St Thomas’s Hospital 4th XV. But, I should add, we were much more for show than substance, but probably explains some of my cognitive loss of esoterica. Some.
I resemble that remark. Years of being kicked around the garden by my older brother and games lessons that made the football sequence in Kes with Brian Glover as the PE teacher look like a documentary have left me with a life long loathing of sport, any sport. Even when I’d left school, I’d be asked “who do you support?” When I said I didn’t like football, I was frequently accused of being “a poof” by some Neanderthal.
When my son was briefly interested in football, on the rare occasions I had to drop him off and collect him, I’d race in and out, avoiding any conversation with other parents, lest they think I was in any way interested.
The obsession with sport and the assumption that everyone likes it has, at times, made my life miserable.
Sounds familiar – especially growing up in Glasgow.
I also experienced that bullying, and the lack of comprehension from people that I’m just not that bothered about footy. It used to affect me until I realised that being myself was a better experience than being the same as those people.
As I said I loath rugby due to playing it at school and the oafish behaviour which goes with it. Twang Jr played it for a while and sure enough, it was still there. Fat red faced men in track suits shouting at children. I was overjoyed when he knocked it on the head. In fact he was much more committed than I was (I’d have done anything to avoid it) playing for the school etc but eventually even he’d had enough.
Not for everybody I am sure. I have played football, cricket, rugby, squash, tennis, golf, snooker etc. Some great times and some not so great times, I performed best at cricket and squash. I miss squash quite a bit, but it’s just too painful these days. I don’t judge anybody who has no interest though, my brother falls into that category
I used to love playing squash but as you say it has a natural end for most people. After about 5 years away from it some people at work got up a lunchtime game – one on, one off, just for fun etc. – after 10 minutes we were all running round like lunatics, chasing every ball etc. I could hardly move the next day and realised my squash playing days were over.
I liked their earlier work, when you only got 3 points for a try, and the ball had to go in straight to a scrum. Glory days.
3 points / 5 points – and there rests my confusion:
do ONE thing, and score extra points. Why?
Do you get 2 goals if you score from outside the penalty area?
It encourages attacking play.
When a try and an unconverted try were both worth three points, a team awarded a penalty in kicking distance generally opted for the kick.
Functional but not entertaining.
The try value was increased to four and then to five to encourage open, entertaining play.
Just knew there would be a logical reason …
Initially the game was all about kicking goals. The try gave you a chance to try and get one. Hence the name. Over the years it became more and more important
Football all the way for me – went to a Rugby playing school, and enjoyed playing it (chosen position: hooker), but never got hooked in as a spectator.
Although did sometimes watch Rugby Union on Grandstand (voiced by Eddie Waring) … with no real understanding what was going on, or the differences in the codes.
Six Nations pushed big time by pubs – leading me to believe Rugby Union is just an excuse for a p*ss-up.
You truly had no understanding, Eddie Waring did the rugby league on Grandstand.
Oh flip … I meant League
I fucking hate rugby
Never mind @dai. Here’s a good one to cheer you up..
What’s the link between the Wales rugby team, and the sad death of the renowned pioneer of printing, Johannes Gutenberg?
14 – 68.
What I’ve hated since I got into watching rugby at 12 (and football) is the defeats hurt far more and last far longer that any euphoria from the big wins. As a Welsh rugby fan, and Tottenham supporter, the last few years have been grim. My logical side says these are massively paid people providing entertainment – nobody’s saving lives here. But my resentful other side still takes ages to process these bad runs of form. That game on Saturday will take months. Bloody sport.
I think it’s the hope that kills you. Whenever you allow that optimism to creep in, you’re slapped down.
I referee Union; I watch NRL over here religiously, as I do the Test matches in cricket. I can take or leave football.
Obviously, I enjoy sport. I understand not everyone does.
But I have found, on reflection, I’ve gained a lot from sport in life. I’m T1 diabetic, and that teaches you that you’re going to get knocked down by life; rugby taught me that you have to just back up again, and gave me practice at it.
Refereeing has helped me professionally – man management in stressful situations, as well as making quick, accurate decisions.
Could I have learned these lessons elsewhere? Maybe. But I learned them from sport, and I’m grateful for it.
I have very little interest in sport generally and I actively dislike the tribalism that team games generate, particularly football with its persistent undercurrent of violence and yobbish behaviour. I can appreciate that most people don’t feel the same way, and that’s fine. I used to play tennis and badminton with some enthusiasm, but crushing lack of ability, and tennis is about the only sport I watch with any interest. I’d much rather slap on a pair of walking boots and head for the hills; good for the body and the soul.
This is hardly a new observation but the attachments we make to football teams are similar to those we make to music. For whatever reason, many of us want to be in a gang from an early age so early on you choose a football club and go with it. The Main Thing is that once you choose one (or it chooses you) you never, ever change your club. I remember David “Kid!” Jensen breezily saying that he changed clubs as an adult – as if this was normal and acceptable.
So by the time you are 9, your football team is established. Many of your family group will likely have similar allegiances and you don’t necessarily need to support the same team. It was important glue in our developing sibling relationships and carries on to this day. To paraphrase Louis Armstrong, when your brother says “I see your lot were humped by Liverpool!” – he’s really saying “I love you”.
As you get older, those you know you only as an acquaintance will eventually get to know who you support and it can be a nice, neutral source of conversation when making friends. Or it can be a way to gently take the piss, which is an important facet of the British character.
Yes, occasionally a drunken thug may chant rude words in your face but I have had that happen very, very rarely and always by people I didn’t give a shit about, so it’s all good.
I’m not sure rugby has all that going on. It has never occurred to me to support a particular rugby club. Yes, there will be people that go to club matches and international games and prefer rugby to football, but I think rugby fans are different. Some are very tactically-minded, studying a game and re-watching games as if they are the team’s coach. These people are not the majority, but there’s more of them in rugby I think.
I have lived in NZ for many years now and I go to far more rugby than football. The quality of rugby here is world-class. I have seen some extraordinarily exciting games and been astonished at the pace and skill on display. And yet I’d much rather watch England grind out a 1-0 win against Montenegro in Euro qualifier.
I think football tribalism is more similar to religion than music, in that most fans were simply indoctrinated into their tribe at a very young age, very often by their father. “Give me the child until he is 7 and I will show you the man” as someone said. Musical tribalism tends to come at a later age and is more a result of peer pressure, fashion and personal taste than straightforward indoctrination.
Up to a point, Lord Copper. It’s casting my mind back a long way – but I don’t recall either peer pressure or fashion being involved when I joined the cult of VdGG…literally none of my peers had heard of them – and they were (nearly) as unfashionable then as they are now.
I certainly agree with your point about football tribalism equating more with religion than music.
It’s far more socially acceptable to change musical tribes than it is to change football tribe or religion.