A personal history of modern rugby: The fan (Part 2)

Rather like the game, some things have changed for the better and some for the worse.

The most important breakthrough in fandom has been the mobile phone. Back in the ’80s we used to meet our friends after the game under the posts Ireland were defending in the second half. Yes, you were allowed on the pitch post-game back then.

This worked well, but if at a later stage of the day a member of one’s party went missing, it could mean all kinds of unverifiable events were about to take place and it was a real bugger having to traipse back to Paris on a Monday to get a pal released from the clink. So, mobiles are good.

Stadiums in the old days were not designed for fans. Visibility was often poor and there were no giant TV screens allowing you to watch what you had missed when getting a round in. Men’s toilets were totally unfit for purpose, failing to take into account prodigious consumption of beer and Guinness and you were in even more trouble if you were distressed from a curry the night before. The girls fared even worse, hopping around in long queues, thighs clamped together.

Nowadays, I guess stadium design 101 at university just teaches some simple arithmetic: 40,000 fans, 200,000 pints, divided by average bladder capacity, subtract vomiters, multiply by prostate size and you have NOTNAUPOO (Number Of Toilets Needed To Avoid Unseemly Pissing Over Others).

So stadiums are definitely better even if they have names like Telstra or BT: well done Twickenham for holding out against this unseemly trend and not taking the loot, but then again, the rich Englishmen probably don’t need the money.

(Ashley Western/MB Media/Getty Images)

Money, of course, is the root of evil and in the rugby world this leads to empty corporate boxes or corporate boxes full of empty heads who don’t understand a thing about the game, and care only about being seen. Expensive or unobtainable tickets for real fans are another issue.

Despite the on-field violence of the past and the red cards of today, rugby fans were and still are, by and large, a polite and courteous bunch. At Lansdowne Road (now Aviva or Avira or some such thing) you can still hear a pin drop, such is the silence when the opposition take a place kick. Other northern hemisphere crowds are equally respectful.

Sadly, not so in the south. What is it about you Kiwis? You are normally the nicest people on God’s green planet but talk about rugby and Dr Jekyll becomes Mr Hyde and you boo and hiss at opposition kickers like demented demons. I mean, come on, we all know you are the best, so why not just behave as your colonial masters taught you to?

Even the police used to be kind to rugby fans. My favourite trip as a youth was to Twickenham to watch the Celts smash the Saxons, and we sometimes did.

I often didn’t have a ticket but all you needed to do was talk to a copper outside the ground, tell him you were a poor Irish student and ask him if he had any spare tickets. More often than not he had, as people whose friends couldn’t make the game would hand their spare tickets to the copper, gratis, who would then hand them over to you, also gratis. What a great system.

Meeting interesting people and ending up in unusual places is one of the joys of fandom. I once ended up at the Irish Club post a Twickenham match. The sadly now defunct Irish Club stood in Eaton Square, which is about the poshest address in London barring Buckingham Palace, which is just around the corner.

I am a bit hazy about events that evening, but I do remember the interior had a nice Guinness and cigarette aroma and if there is a better place in the world to subsequently deposit a belly full of Guinness than Eaton Square, I am yet to find it. If you had time to make a decision, you could choose an aristocratic entrance stairwell or the Bentley parked outside as your primary target.

We fans do talk a lot of tosh. Happy days, and go Ireland.