Emerging from the scrum, battered but not broken!

Cavanman's Diary

Rugby Town, March, 2023, the eve of the great showdown. All is well. Tomorrow, the townspeople will send out their best and bravest men to take on the hated Sasanachs. The force has never been as strong – new warriors have arrived from foreign shores, ready to fight under a new flag.

The residents know that when the bell strikes four times, a historic victory is within their grasp and that their heroes, the TeamOfUs, will come home triumphant. And then, in an instant, all is changed.

The skies darken. An outsider is spotted in Rugby Town, a no-good, rotten malcontent who has been spreading unrest with his quill, telling the people that he will not follow the TeamOfUs. No harm, he says, but he just finds it all a bit over the top.

But harmed he will be! A crowd soon gathers in the town square, a chant begins. “So-called journalist! Get him out!” they cry in unison, “So-called journalist! Get him out!”

Word seems to have got around that he had said something he didn’t, that he was undermining the very fabric of society. He needed stopping.

“Pathetic!” bellows one man – and several others take up that shout.

“I am embarrassed to be from the same town,” declares another.

Another member of the tribe finds it “insulting”. This heretic is “a begrudging killjoy”. “You should be ashamed,” he is told.

“You stupid boy,” remarks another. From the back of the crowd someone pipes up: “You’re only an attention-seeker!”

The baying grows louder. “Come out, Paul, whoever you are,” demands one man.

“Muppet!”

“F’in’ idiot!”

“Disgrace.”

“Nasty.”

The dissenter, at the edge of town now, retreats backwards, palms of his hands raised. “Folks, calm down,” he pleads, “let me explain…”

*********

Mercifully, I won’t bludgeon you with this metaphor any longer. Suffice to say, the week before last, I made the grievous error of writing a column about how the hype around the Irish national rugby team leaves me cold. The comments above were all published by readers on the Anglo-Celt’s Facebook page.

Rugby, I opined in the article, is a great game and the grassroots volunteers are on a par with those in any code but the national team is now marketed to within an inch of its life and has attracted a gargantuan bandwagon - and, personally, that turns me off.

For a columnist, it’s true that there is only one thing worse than being talked about but, after 17 years in this game, I was still taken aback by the ferocity of the response on social media to that piece.

Naively, I had hoped that it may have resonated with some readers, provided a different viewpoint, entertained and provoked debate. I can’t even say that it did the latter because there was little or no debate. It was sheer outrage, culminating in one person actually calling for the newspaper to be boycotted, which I found truly staggering.

This was a pile-on and it felt like there was an element of public shaming to it. Petty as I am (guilty, m’lud), I won’t put names to the comments because, now that the shouting has died down, they may not feel as strongly and, well, let he who has not angrily vilified a stranger publicly cast the first stone.

The comments became quite personalised very quickly and it was fascinating and amusing to observe this modern-day mob at work (“Come out, whoever you are!” - Jesus wept). Many of those penning abuse had Ukrainian flags and “be kind” filters on their profiles, which was not surprising either; an intolerance of opposing opinions and performative good-heartedness tend to make for comfortable bedfellows in these strange times, where social media exists as a sort of parallel world.

(Click the link and 'all comments' below to read the feedback from our Facebook page)

Even though it is a matter of record, it’s important to point out that I made it very clear at the top of the piece that I hold the actual sport in high regard. I have been to the rugby clubs in Cavan and Virginia many times and interviewed those involved in them. The volunteer spirit is magnificent.

The piece was focused specifically on the hype around the national team and how the line between the marketing of the product and the product itself – the games – has been blurred. Predictably, I suppose, the issues got conflated and some of the most popular comments disingenuously centred on how disgraceful it was for the newspaper to print an article denigrating the local clubs when, of course, it was no such thing.

As it happened, I was in Co Cavan Rugby Club on Wednesday evening last to meet some of the coaches and officials for an upcoming piece (arranged prior to my Facebook lynching, I promise!) and the welcome could not have been warmer. Both clubs in Cavan have made extraordinary strides and are shining examples in particular in the area of inclusion.

I don’t think it is gratuitously insulting, though, to state that there is a vast difference between the volunteers I met at Swellan Park and the majority of supporters of the Irish rugby team. Maybe I have a misplaced, Corinthian view of what represents true sport but I find it hard, personally, to feel a deep passion for any game that I view only through the prism of the marketeers.

Here is a fact: Most of those who put on their jersey to watch the Irish team play from their living rooms or their local pubs, and even a lot of the event junkies who get their hands on tickets for the big matches, have never held a rugby ball in their hands in their lives, nor have they attended a match at their local club.

I have friends who played and have attended plenty of junior rugby matches and the crowds, as in most of the matches in my own preferred sport of handball, tend to be very small. That suggests to me that most of those who express their undying love for the Irish national team are in thrall not to the game itself but to the product they are being sold.

Were it the other way round, junior rugby clubs would be swamped with punters looking to pay in. They’re not – and even in the All-Ireland League, attendances are often limited to three figures.

There is a stark disconnect there and the logical conclusion is that those who exhibit such a deep-seated loyalty to the national team, to the point where they will abuse strangers on the internet who express a differing view, are not supporters of the sport of rugby but rather one heavily-promoted aspect of it.

And, yes, that’s a type of fandom, sure, but they are not embedded in the sport and there is a massive difference there.

I’m not saying that you must be a coach, player or administrator or at least a member of a club to follow and enjoy a sport but, if you’re not, you simply are not truly invested and, as such, you’re kidding yourself if you think you enjoy equal ownership.

It was notable, too, in the public comments and in the many emails I received, that an awful lot of people disparaged the GAA, which I didn’t mention in the piece. Maybe, the send-up of the hype train that is the national team was just too close to the bone for the high-stool diehards.

Another interesting aspect of the pile-on was that, considering the engagement it got on social media, actual traffic to the story was relatively low, which suggests that a lot of those who were moved to comment didn’t actually read it. Again, are you surprised?

The comment, which blew my mind entirely, went as follows:

“The most begrudging, narrow minded and bigoted piece of cheap gutter journalism I seen [sic] in a long time. Bordering on racism. Shame on any journalist with attitudes like that. Not surprising from this guy though.”

How dramatic. Fitting, though, for a Hollywood production, really...