da mrbet： Warning: The below may contain sweeping generalisations. Lots of them. In fact it does contain lots of sweeping generalisations. There’s no ‘may’ about it.
da betano casino： Sport ultimately is about rivalry because without Nadal v Djokovic or Hamilton cutting up Vettel or Bears hating on Packers what is the point of it all?
It almost goes without saying however that in every example of one-upmanship these rivalries are kept in-house because a sport versus a sport is a fairly ridiculous notion. Each are unique from one another with their own traditions and ways and rules right down to the apparatus required to participate. So it follows that comparisons – particularly competitive comparisons – are entirely illogical.
Except in one instance, a popular pastime that is apparently united in camaraderie and good humour where the only conflict lies in who can reach the bar first to get a round in for their opposition-supporting chums.
Rugby it seems is a sporting utopia, a place where men or women knock seven bells out of one another before dusting themselves down and walking off the pitch all matey like while in the stands both sets of supporters share Ginsters pies and murray mints. Rugby is a John Lewis advert: All safe and fuzzy and perfect.
Their rivalry – at least beyond cheering on their team before offering a gusty hip-hip-hooray to the victors – is aimed outward, towards the grubby oiks that inhabit the world of football.
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Quite what we ever did to offend them is anyone’s guess but in between belting out slave songs in their Hackett polo-shirts your average rugger-bugger likes nothing more than to piously belittle the national game at any given opportunity and the ongoing World Cup has certainly offered plenty of those.
A great big lurch of a creature falls to the ground under a heavy challenge and you wait for the inevitable.
You never, ever have to wait longer than a couple of seconds. “Imagine that in football,” they scoff, their specialty ale breath making you recoil. “They’d be rolling around as if they’d been shot!”
The reason lurch isn’t doing so is because he’s just been spear tackled by a seventeen stone brute and dumped from several feet onto his head, an act of violence that would bring days of media outrage in football and a possible jail term to follow. In rugby it warrants a ticking off and a few minutes on the bench to think about what he’s done.
As for the ‘rolling around’ have the rugger-buggers never heard of comedy? It’s pure piss-funny theatre that gets us out of our seats hurling abuse at the worst hammy acting since Cheryl Fernandez-Thingamabob squeezed out a tear on X-Factor. It’s welcome reinvigoration on a cold November day. It’s outrageous behaviour that spikes the senses to 11 which is no bad thing considering what we’re watching is designed to do just that.
It also indirectly aids player’s safety. When a footballer goes down and remains stock still we know it’s serious and medics rush on with greater haste. Whereas lurch ‘bravely’ carrying on while rubbing the broken vertebrae in his neck doesn’t seem that admirable to me, only stupid and dangerous.
Ah but what about the respect for the referees? I’m afraid here my Volvo-driving comrades you also have it entirely the wrong way around. Refs should not be respected. They are weird power-hungry attention-seeking little men who are the enemy. They, as many a chant has alluded to, are wankers. If you wish to constantly cede to authority with gimpish subservience that’s fine – to know your place and all that – but it’s really nothing to be proud of. Surely challenging authority is a far more honourable mentality?
(If you’re an aggrieved egg chaser reading this by the way and wish to reply in the comments you might want you ask Nigel Owens if it’s permissible first?)
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Well, you bellow, all ruddy-cheeked with indignation, what about the players themselves? Footballers these days are pampered divas arrested in development through fame and fortunes.
And yes, here you have an incontestable point. The game is awash with spoilt man-children protected from real life to the point where changing a plug would probably require a phone call to their agent. Yet I would rather have a sporting hero who builds a barber shop in his tacky mansion to avoid the public’s gaze than admire a cauliflower-eared barbarian who gets slaughtered on beer before chucking dwarves around for fun. Each to their own I suppose.
As for the fans, well surely here rugby wins out? They, after all, are cut from superior chino cloth. Simply a better sort of people.
There’s Jezza the Ledge, four times champion of his members-only drinking establishment’s spunky-biscuit tournament and his solicitor pals who wholly approve of the government’s tax credit cuts. Further along sits Henry quaffing his G+T. Tweed jacketed and incapable of looking a female square in the eye Henry can quote whole tracts of Clarkson diatribes and stopped taking the Telegraph when it went a bit leftie. Then there’s Seb – good old, dependable Seb – who collects first edition books on the Raj and has a propensity for tying salmon knitwear around his shoulders.
Like I say, a better sort, and certainly in comparison to the rabid hooligan hordes who give out Chelsea smiles at oppo grounds. No, wait, that’s just in Green Street and Sebastian and Jemima’s imagination.
If you middle counties toffy dweebs continue to hate on football then expect us to hate on your right back because frankly – like your collars and views on hunting – you have it all completely wrong.
Sport is supposed to be bellicose and tribal. It’s supposed to fizz and crackle with hatred. It’s supposed to bring out the worst in us and exorcise the extremities that we keep bottled up in our normal humdrum existence. Far better to unleash it at an incompetent, possibly corrupt official or a player on two hundred grand a week or segregated opposition support who are screaming abuse back at us in a strange accent than your boss or annoying neighbour who nicks your recycling bags.
Passion is not just a fruit found in Waitrose and it’s certainly not a Neanderthal carrying on with a broken nose. Its hatred and angst and intensity along with an absolute refusal to be magnanimous in defeat. Passion is heightened and heartfelt and pragmatism and a jolly good handshake plays very little part in that.
So enough with the piety and your Vodaphone-sponsored scoffing. You stick to your bloody but bloodless play. We’ll stick to our opera.
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