We should all just accept something that is so obviously wrong? Totally based on a falsehood?

I’m surprised the French haven’t been their contrary selves over this issue. For once they would be entitled to be contrary!

I would like to touch on a comment by Spiro, re William Webb Ellis.

The World Cup trophy is named in his honour, yet there appears sufficient evidence that William Webb Ellis did nothing of the sort he was purported to have done (we’ve all heard the story, “with a fine disregard of the rules”, etc, etc).

It appears the act attributed to William Webb Ellis was done with the same retrospectivity that league used to justify its creation. Some old Rugby-ites used the WWE story to justify/cement union’s place as the original rugby code.

So, if WWE never picked up the ball & ran with it, why do we persisit with the lie today? And why have the name William Webb Ellis attached to such an august trophy?

League can’t be ruined by the ref because the rule makers have already stuffed it!

Let’s hear it for diversity.

Players what referees to be consistant. Guess what? Referees want players to be consistant too but in the real world neither is possible. Everyone has good and bad games but 99% of the time the better, more disciplined team wins the match.

Last weekend the better team was RSA no question. Had the Wallabies won, it would have been against all stats and odds. How can you win when you spend most of the game in your own half?

Clinton needs to simply accept any decision for or against and get over it. To spend time pondering past decisions (mostly against) is energy wasted.

If he missed league so much, then tear up the agreement and wave him farewell.

At Eton and Winchester a different type of football game was developed which was more along the lines of the famous Eton Wall Game. At Winchester a cruel and attritional form of football was developed based around scrumming. Scrums were know as The Hot which packed down in three rows of three (the origin of the modern scrum). The middle man in the front row was called ‘OP’ (Over the Pill) and the man immediately behind him was know as ‘Up Arse.’

Accounts of Winchester matches recall how ‘the front row would crash their heads down and try to get them in the stomachs of their opponents before they could do it to them.’ Sound familiar? The other duties of the forwards included having to stand in front of opponents while they booted the ball at them from point-blank range. Players who flinched were said to ‘carry the shame to the grave.’

In my book Winters Of Revenge: The Bitter Rivalry Between the All Blacks and the Springboks (Viking Penguin 1997) I’ve got a much fuller account of all of this.

In the book I make the suggestion that NZ has played Rugby School rugby. And South Africa has played Winchester School rugby. NZ rugby has tended to be more expansive in the Rugby School mode than South African rugby which has been dominated by the scrumming obsession of Winchester School.

Rugby was brought to NZ by Charles John M unro in 1870. Munro was educated at Finchley Hall between 1867 – 1869 where the main sport was ‘the game they play at Rugby School.’

Rugby was brought to South Africa by the Rev Canon George Ogilivie. Canon Ogilivie had been a pupil at Winchester School before taking up church work in South Africa. He became Principal of Diocesan College in 1861. He believed the Winchester game was ‘a healthy form of winter exercise’ for the young men of Cape Town. Diocesan is still a very strong rugby school.

This brings us back to Garth’s argument that the various rugby countries play rugby in different ways which gives a diversity to the game, and difficulties for referees to impose a standard form of interpretation of the laws.