FAO blindasabat

Good read in G2 today

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Here's a taster

"This is the caricatured rugby public of Twickenham and the Harlequins rugby club, of the annual Varsity match and the sort of rugger-bugger social antics that define a certain kind of endlessly braying, terminally boorish Englishness. Such things still exist, in pockets. But if this World Cup can achieve anything beyond the handing out of medals to the winners, it will be to take a wrecking ball to a stereotype of the game's ambiance that may once have contained a certain truth but is now, as a working definition, utterly obsolete.

Born at the public school from which it took its name, rugby is still a game of class distinctions - but not always along straightforward lines. In Wales, although essentially classless, it was embraced by coal miners and steel workers and helped to create their communal identities; in Scotland it belongs to the good schools and the professions. In England, however, rugby means different things to different people. No doubt the Harlequins, whose ground is across the road from Twickenham, still draw a significant proportion of their support from a constituency of Barboured and hip-flask-toting lawyers, accountants and estate agents. But in Gloucester, where the current England captain Phil Vickery made his name, and in the rest of the west country, the packed crowds demonstrate a raw ferocity closer to that found in soccer stadiums in the days before gentrification. In those territories, as well as a few others around the country, it is the people's sport."

Posted By: Old Git on October 16th 2007 at 12:39:54

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