Rugby needs great stories, so what’s the next one?

 
Garth Hamilton Columnist

By , 13 Oct 2010 Garth Hamilton is a Roar Expert

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Australia's Julian Huxley is tackled by Canada's Dth van der Merwe, left, and Colin Yukes, right, during the Rugby World Cup Group B match between Australia and Canada at the Chaban-Delmas stadium in Bordeaux. AP Photo/Bob Edme

What in life compares to the feelings that new love brings? The engulfment of every mundanity in sunshine and melody, the injection of anticipatory energy into even the depths of our sleep. We strangely call the sensation ‘heady’ whilst knowing it to be entirely the work of the heart.

I am still heady, or hearty, after my recent dalliance with the Ryder Cup. Having derided as gormless fools those who willingly watch the past time (for surely it isn’t a real sport) of golf on television for all of my adult life I am now a changed man. Sort of.

I didn’t actually watch any of the ‘action’ but terribly enjoyed reading the UK newspaper reports that completely swept soccer from the back pages for this one, rain sodden week. I maintain my stance on the inherently boring nature of televised golf but now back up my ignorant discriminations with the borrowed observation that some sports are simply better covered in print.

Take the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. I would happily read for a good half hour about the exploits of those mad men in their sinking machines but there is no way in hell I would seriously consider sitting down with the purpose of watching half an hour of yachting. Two minutes, maybe five, max.

And so I am hooked on the Ryder Cup. It’s like a Lions tour but with Americans involved. And Miguel Angel Jimenez.

Now, as new love tends to do, I am brought back to consider my first love; Rugby. Comparisons surround me and, with a golfing sort of excitement still afresh, I must wonder;

If I had never known the game of rugby would I fall in love with it now?

This year’s Super 14 and Tri Nations series produced some absolutely wonderful rugby. Thrilling, entertaining stuff where men played with the spirit of school kids, a youthful optimism simply peeled off my tv screen as teams like the Reds and New Zealand played rugby as if it were a game and not a job.

The season thrilled me, filled me with a sporting lust. I felt like Tiger Woods wearing a convincing disguise in the back streets of Amsterdam or Shane Warne at the annual Single Mother’s convention on Hamilton Island.

But that, gentlemen, ain’t love.

Just like I did with the Ryder Cup, I fell in love with rugby for its story. It wasn’t the sausages but the sizzle that got to me on this sporting barbeque.

With the Ryder Cup I loved the idea of solidarity, of unpaid glory that sits so far above what an individual can achieve. I love what the Ryder Cup means to the Europeans and I love that one day an American captain will understand this and, like John McEnroe in the Davis Cup, bring that passion to the fore.

It was these sort of stories that originally wrapped me in the depths of rugby union. I loved the game as much for its now derided amateurism as I loved it for characters like David Campese who openly flouted it.

I loved the idea of rugby tours and full international teams playing against club sides. Lions jerseys left in changing rooms for hospitalised opponents, Hakas performed in front of school teachers and stockbrokers.

I loved that JPR Williams was actually Dr JPR Williams. The same for Mark Loane and others. I loved the idea that Brian Moore, the angry little English hooker is a solicitor. I love it even more that he is also now a fully qualified manicurist.

I loved that it was ok to be a bit of a nerd and still play the game. Have a look at the physiques of Joel Stransky, Andrew Mehrtens or Jason Little and tell me they couldn’t throw a little name tag around their neck and happily walk in, without impediment, to take up a desk in the offices of Google or Apple.

Julian Huxley could start talking about the complexities of the Large Hadron Collider and I wouldn’t blink an eyelid.

I loved that at the age of 14 and standing 6 foot 6 with a physique that my First XV coach loving described as ‘a long streak of weasle piss’, there was a position requiring exactly those dimensions. Better still there was the lineout; an entire set piece that ensured I was literally thrust up into the spotlight.

I loved going to Ballymore and running onto the ground after the whistle went, racing my mates to try and steal a corner flag. I loved dodging Garrick Morgan’s giant fists as he rolled his way with great annoyance through the crowd to the dressing rooms.

I loved the All Blacks and didn’t care that we weren’t equals in the international game. I loved Serge Blanco from the first time I saw him and now happily fork out way too much for items from his over-priced men’s fashion line. But honey, its SERGE.

I loved that it was the sport of big business and felt no need to bind itself to a working class mentality. The stories of David Kirk, Michael Hawker only really began when they left rugby.

I loved the game’s global reach. Che Guevera, Kris Kristopherson, Pierre de Coubertin, Oliver Reed, Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, George Speight, Idi Amin, Richard Burton, Sir Edmund Hillary, Boris Karloff and James Joyce all rucked and/or mauled at some point in their lives. What a rugby tour group that would make.

I don’t ever remember falling in love with the game because of its action. I can remember ‘the try from the ends of the world’ and John Kirwan’s blitzing run against Italy in the first world cup but these were merely the fruits of love realised. They weren’t the inducements but the rewards reaped.

This year’s rugby has been wonderful and I hope it has attracted new crowds but in time the game will likely return to a period of dourness as the cycle of professional rugby continues. Coaches will, and should, always try and find ways to get the upper hand and that will inevitably lead some teams down a more cynical route.

Rugby cannot avoid this but it can control its story. That is something that dourness and cynicism cannot change.

The amateur era is gone. The Corinthian ideals have no place in rugby’s biggest draw card, the World Cup. A single midweek game here or there now constitutes a rugby tour. The medical aspirations of the John Roes and Jamie Roberts are becoming rarer and rarer amongst rugby players more likely to be focused on post-playing careers behind commentary desks.

The game continues to be one for players of all shapes and sizes but it sometimes feels that even this is also something of a last bastion. As though professionalism has led rugby down the Kokoda trail and our supply lines are running out fast .

Now I know that everyone isn’t like me and that for many bright shiny images and flashing lights are what gets them going and that’s ok. Baz Luhrman has made a fine career on the basis of that knowledge but I like a bit more substance.

I like a good story.

All sports have their stories and they are as much a part of their fabric as their various rules and conventions be it AFL, basketball, surfing or fox hunting. For whatever reason rugby’s story appealed to me but it is a story that is no longer true of the modern game.

It is a story of the past, not the present or the future.

What is rugby’s new story?

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