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.
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.
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?
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.
preciouspress
Guest
I am afraid most Australians just don't understand Rugby. They view the game through the spectrum of pay TV - we must have more tries and running rugby, more substitutes and yellow cards, less scrummaging and line-outs. Lets make it more like Rugby League where Australia rules the World (at least France, N. England and NZ). In Europe the game is based on club rugby and this is and will be it's strength. Australia's top down system of Gold Coast retreats and special contracts whilst ignoring the club roots of Rugby will lead to our reservoir of talent drying up and quickly. Stop whingeing about ELVs, get out from in front of your plasmas and join a club.
Rusty
Roar Guru
Totally on the money
Hermin
Guest
I have just been through to the IRB website and their official rankings do start from October 13th 2003. I find it to be a little absurd that they would not publish the rankings from September 2003 so one would have to assume that Otober 13th was the start date. The tension between some posters is very obvious here and I find it somewhat intriguing. In this case I would have to say poster QC is right. Heres the link for other posters who may be interested http://www.irb.com/rankings/archive/year=2003.html
Justin
Guest
KO - I will take your word for it that crowds are on the rise in the GP, thats god news. But lets face it they are coming off a very low base judging by the crowds so far this year. My summation of each clubs attendance is - Bath - Very good in relation to capacity, full houses so far Gloucester - Pretty good, getting about 75% of capacity Quins - Pretty average - getting around 66% capacity Leeds - Atrocious, only around 30% capacity. Lecister - Very good, 90% capacity Irish - Very average, just over 50% Wasps - prety good, 80% cap Newcastle - very very ordinary, just over 50% cap Northhampton - doing very well with 90% cap Sale - pretty decent with 70% cap Saracens - difficult to judge with 2 matches at Twicks (doubleheader) and Wembley. Normal home match terrible. Worcester - pretty reasonable at 80% cap. The subjective rating I have given is in relation to the home ground capacity, thats not really a true reflection to some degree of how poorly attend the GP is. The incredibly small capacity of some of the grounds defies belief for a pro competition. From those stats on the GP site there have only been 3 sellouts at true home grounds. The double header opening weekend was well attended as you would hope as was the Saracens match at Wembley. How many matches a week are shown on TV? Are the costs of renting Twicks/Wembley or other large stadia too prohibitive to do any more than a couple of times a year? I wont even comment on the pathetic crowds in the Magners League, goodness me, how do these teams not go broke? TV obviously keeps them afloat but the figures are scarily poor. Do supporters prefer to go to the HK matches instead? In all honesty I have heard the game is going from strength to strength but on these figures there is a long way to go before any can so the game is flourishing I would have thought.
Justin
Guest
I dont think Argentina are a developing nation by the way, they are a major force in international rugby on the field.
Derm
Roar Guru
Well they do. Up to a point. Thereafter you need a slanging match to sort the minor points of difference. :)
Parisien
Guest
What is going on? The Roar used to be one of my favourite reads on rugby. Even if I often don't agree with Pothale and Knives Out, or even Sheek and Leftarm Spinner to mention just a few of the regular posters, they usually make their points elegantly and provide a dose of realism against the hubris of many a SH rugby fan. The comments tend to be more enlightened than many of those found in mainstream media, in the South or North. Oh dear, it now appears we are back to the old "my rugby team is better than your rugby team ", or "my hemisphere is better than yours" slinging match. And I thought the results spoke for themselves...
Knives Out
Guest
'For pride? For the love of representing their homelands so far away from home? As alien as it may seem for somes teams its not all about the Sterling. If you were from a small Island in the Pacific and someone told you you might be playing England at the home of rugby but you wouldn’t make any money would you go? Im sure the PIs costs were covered so it wouldn’t have cost them anything, they were already in the UK for that time period. Contact with? Thats a vague term. We have everyday contact with Tonga and Samoa, their largest concentration of population is our largest city.' I'm pretty sure that the majority of the PI players have played at Twickenham, and given that the entire reason for starting the PI team was to make money I can't imagine that the administrators simply allowed their players to turn up for a financial loss. I can't imagine they simply had enough money and decided to play for pride. We're talking about flights, food, hotel costs, kit bills etc. By contact I obviously mean regular games against these teams. When is the last time that NZ entertained teams other than England, France, Ireland (and recently Italy) during their June tests? The crux of the matter is that the Sanzar attitude has been far mroe insular than the European attitude.
OldManEmu
Guest
I have seen you write that before KO; what does it mean?
katzilla
Roar Guru
For pride? For the love of representing their homelands so far away from home? As alien as it may seem for somes teams its not all about the Sterling. If you were from a small Island in the Pacific and someone told you you might be playing England at the home of rugby but you wouldn't make any money would you go? Im sure the PIs costs were covered so it wouldn't have cost them anything, they were already in the UK for that time period. Contact with? Thats a vague term. We have everyday contact with Tonga and Samoa, their largest concentration of population is our largest city.
katzilla
Roar Guru
Colin you still dont understand, I was stating that there are two sides to every story, and that neither opinion is or could be proved correct. Read it a bit slower. Neither that Opinion, which was not mine, or KOs could be proven correct so his earlier statement regarding players improving because of playing in the north is un quantifiable. I was proving a point not making an arrogant statement. Read it again please.
Knives Out
Guest
If you Google the word dictionary then you will find various options that should lead you to an online dictionary. In any reliable dictionary if you type in the words 'irony' and 'hypocritical' you might just have a Lazarus moment. Perhaps you should type in the word 'inflammatory' too. Just out of curiosity, does the Roar Police have a high starting salary? Are there any fringe benefits beyond a misguided sense of self-satisfaction, and does the ego needed to sustain this high-end position clash with you antiquated Calvinistic approach to semantics?
Invictus
Guest
KO - the second part of your reply is the response you should have made, minus the inflamtory language. Under other circumstances I might try to elicit further info about the reasons for englands structure holding them back, as I have always been curious about this, but given the petulance of your reply I won't bother. I didn't make a cheap shot. Based on your posts that I've seen it was a perfectly valid question. My clarity is just fine. Yours needs work.
Knives Out
Guest
Firstly, a glib response to a glib statement does in no way confirm a tendency to 'pick fights with people'. Such a response highlights the absurdity of the original comment. Please gain some clarity and stop making cheap shots yourself. Secondly, I don't think the comment is worthy of something lucid or adult (especially as it commits the very sin that you accuse me of), but here goes: the article is hardly a lecture by the English 'people'. It is an article by one man. Spiro Zavos seeks to lecture on rugby and specifically with jibes towards the Springboks whilst his nation is by far the weakest Sanzar nation who the Springboks beat with ease. I doubt that westy sees fit to condemn the nonsense of that repetitive scenario. In any case, England has appeared in 3 WC finals, won 1 and is one of only 3 nations to have held the 1st place IRB ranking. Australia is not one of the other two countries. Not only that but England has a domestic competition with increasingly rising attendances, a history that effects tribalism and passion, and which also allows the test side to play a running brand of rugby that Australian supporters used to lecture was the preserve of their test side (but which in fact was only seen in 1984 and inconsistently since then). Whilst Australian rugby has long been geared toward professionalism English rugby has achieved just as much success (in fact probably more) with a system that has been geared toward holding them back. Currently, Australian rugby has a host of crapulent Super sides who play crapulent rugby, and a test side which has just picked up a 3N wooden spoon whilst playing the most boring rugby of all the top tier rugby nations. That doesn't strike me as a position of strength and I guess the Australian fans agree which is why they are shunning the game.
Invictus
Guest
Then why not answer westy's assertion with something other than a cheap shot at an entire country?
Knives Out
Guest
A kit drive is a specific example, and I repeat my stance, that the European unions have had far more contact with Argentina, Canada and the Pacific Islands over the recent years than the SH teams has. One game against Samoa in Taranaki does not make up for an attitude that is generally far more selfish than the Europeans. Incidentally, why would the PIs play if there was nothing in it for them?
Knives Out
Guest
Far more eloquent. You should have said that in the first place.
Colin N
Guest
"The next cab off the rank with Toeava also being injured at the time would have been Tuitavake" Hang on, first you say if Carter, Kahui and Smith had been fit, he wouldn't have been selected, now you add Toeva to the list. However, the argument still stands, all those mentioned are 13's, McAlister was your only other natural 12. Although, having said all that, Smith played in the second test, with Toeava on the bench and Toeva started in the first game, so your argument doesn't really hold up. Either that, or you haven't done the research.
katzilla
Roar Guru
The game was outside the official test window meaning the RFU didn't have to share the proceeds. It was merely a tour game. Francis Baron discussing the fact that the PIs weren't entitled to a slice - "Any Test played outside of the IRB official tours window require a voluntary agreement between the two participating unions and all the issues of cost sharing come into it, so you have to agree a financial package. "We are very proud of our record here. We always provide financial assistance to the Pacific Island teams when they come here. We have helped Samoa and Tonga. "We haven't had a request from the Pacific Islands yet but if we did get one we would listen to it sympathetically." Listen to it 'Sympathetically'? lol. If Sympathy wasn't free the RFU wouldn't give that either. The PIs were bascially told if they wanted a slice they needed to come to the RFU with cap in hand. How noble. Do you think the PIs put money before their pride and went and begged the RFU for some of it? Nope of course not. More contact? Last year the ABs played the Samoan team in Taranaki and they took the gate. Its easy to have a game against Argentina in England when all their players are based in Europe. A kit drive? are you serious? you think things as small as a kit drive to smaller nations is something limited to the north? Im sorry KO, but the RFU are not the White Knight you think they are. Like ive said over and over again, all the major unions are out there gorging themselves on the big dollars without seeing the big picture (NZ are one of the worst), but i dislike your holier then thou theme. Copied my Baron quote from here - http://www.rugbyheaven.com.au/news/england/england-to-play-all-blacks/2008/01/24/1201025043147.html
westy
Guest
The point is Knives Out I stand by the statement. Just as I and other Australians are guilty of lecturing to others some recent cultural trends in elite English club rugby lessen the moral impact of the argument. I note the greater positive social benefit and aspects of village club rugby in England but I do not have to ignore the culture that has crept into the top tier club rugby. That it does not reflect the base does not alter the fact it tarnishes it and reduces its perceived moral authority.