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The ARU should stop deriding English rugby

13th October, 2009
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Roar Guru
13th October, 2009
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3818 Reads
England's Phil Vickery, center, tries to muscle his way through the Italian defence during the Six Nations rugby union international match at Twickenham stadium in London, Saturday Feb. 7, 2009. AP Photo/PA, David Davies

England's Phil Vickery, center, tries to muscle his way through the Italian defence during the Six Nations rugby union international match at Twickenham stadium in London, Saturday Feb. 7, 2009. AP Photo/PA, David Davies

Rugby is a game defined by its lower levels, and in terms of basic hygiene, few bathroom facilities would rate lower than the gentlemen’s restroom under the Charles Wells stand at Goldington Road, the home of the Bedford Blues.

Airing an odour similar in my imagination to Anchorman’s notorious fragrance Sex Panther, these restrooms and the well worn wooden stand under which they ferment, have withstood many a game of rugby.

Far from the endless walls of Twickenham troughing that handle the Guinness-fuelled callings of 80,000 odd spectators with scarcely an overflow, these sanitary remnants of the amateur era are completely undeserving of any further description but serve as a perfect place to begin my tribute to one of the least recognised tributaries of the great running river that is English rugby.

The Blues can trace their history into the 1870’s and rugby, in some early form or other was played at the Bedford School for a long time prior to this.

Perhaps it is this long held attachment to the game that allows Goldington Road some liberties for, beyond the plumbing obscenities faced by its patrons lies a rather more substantial cause for concern for players on the field; from the north-west corner flag to its diagonal opposite in the south-east there is a slope of some five metres.

This potential impairment has been overcome for over 120 years as the ground has seen continuous use since the club’s inception.

To my Australian eyes, accustomed as they are to the shiny and new, this situation seems beyond belief but what further extends it into the ridiculous is that Bedford is one of a handful of clubs with a genuine chance of promotion into the Guinness Premiership next year.

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I shudder to think what Chris Latham’s boot would do with that slope and a small wind behind him. Equally I shudder at the thought of what a Premiership sized crowd would do to that restroom but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

Bedford, according to Sam the endearingly optimistic game-day announcer, is proud to be one of the largest towns in England without a league football club and although it has been some time since the mighty Blues battled it out in the nation’s top competition, rugby is the sport closest to the town’s heart.

Entry into the Premiership would, of course, change, in a very literal sense, the fortunes of the club and there is a palpable sense of hope at Blues’ home games this season.

Bedford has descended into something of a feeder club in the professional years and it is a situation that sits rather unhappily upon the rugby-loving folk of this rugby-loving town.

The club has played its part in nurturing the early careers of England’s Paul Sackey and Scotland’s Scott Murray and provided the revelation of last weekend’s Heineken Cup in the form of Billy Twelvetrees who made a thrilling debut for Leicester against the perennially disappointing Ospreys.

Even Australian rugby fans owe a debt of gratitude to the Blues for their work in hardening the promising young prop Ben Robinson.

Another Australian scrummager, Marco Cecere, is currently on their books although only time will tell if the former Under 21 representative will go on to join the long list of Bedford players such as Martin Bayfield and Rory Underwood to earn international caps.

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But time, it would seem, is on both Cecere’s and Bedford’s side. At 27 the player is but young for a prop and at 123 the club is hoping it is about to re-enter its prime.

On this particular weekend, the Blues ran out rather convincing, if a little complacent, winners over the cash-strapped diehards of Birmingham-Solihull. With an unseasonably blue sky and a good bead of condensation dripping from my beer glass, running rugby ran out the winner as both sides shunned the hoof, preferring to play the game at pace and with width.

In previous years, promotion has gone to the team at the top of the table at the end of the season, usually the newly relegated likes of Leeds or Northampton.

However, this year, for the first time, a playoffs series will be introduced. The knockout post-season will give clubs like Bedford and Exeter heart as their chance of promotion could come down to a one game do-or-die scrap against this season’s prized scalp, Bristol.

Again returning to the view from my Australian eyes, I can’t help but marvel at the strength of English rugby.

As I began, rugby is not defined by the well-manicured and occasionally pampered top tier that shines over the game but rather it is defined by its rough and sometimes shabby underbelly, and on this count I feel Bedford stands as a great pillar of rugby in England.

It is exactly the type of town and the type of club that the ARU has sadly ignored. When last did the ARU throw its weight into the heart of Toowoomba or Orange, those great bastions of country rugby?

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I sincerely hope that the good people tending the groundswell of goodwill that is Rugby Australia can look without affront to ego or pinch to pride at how rugby prospers in the UK and find something of value.

Perhaps it could start by turning its back on the anti-English sentiment preferred by the ARU and, like Australian soccer, promote a genuine appreciation of all international competitions.

By constantly deriding the quality of northern hemisphere rugby and the integrity of its administrators as it did during the ELV trials, the ARU has taken one of rugby’s great strengths, its international appeal, and suffocated it beneath silly, petulant, nationalistic tosh.

I have a feeling this is not a mistake that grassroots rugby supporters will want to be made again.

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