Who would be a rugby player?

Once again sporting personalities are making the headlines for reasons other than match prowess or success. The behaviour of England's rugby players has come under press scrutiny and criticism for other than playing reasons. But, is there really a need for us to know about the silly antics of rugby players when they are not on the training ground? Most of the time their antics are no worse than what happens on a Friday night when young men have had too much to drink. Just because they are on a grandiose rugby trip at the World Cup, do we expect that the behaviour should be any different? So lets look at what the England players have been doing a little more closely.

They go out to a pub the night after winning a key match and have a few beers to let off steam before their next match which is a week away. It seems that doing this is not really a problem as they did not misbehave in any other way. The difference on the night in question is that one of the party is married to a member of the royal family. This means that the press were after a story. Supposedly, he is seen embracing or being friendly with an ex-girl friend and the story grew from there. A tabloid newspaper acquires a tape of the drinkers from the bar's CCTV system. Pictures from this tape are emblazoned over the front pages of the tabloid press. None of these pictures were very clear but they were blown out of all proportion. Nothing in the pictures indicated that any wrong doing was going on. These pictures should not have been published as they were an egregious and irresponsible invasion of privacy. The innuendo sparked by their publication was clear and it ended up damaging his reputation and probably and needlessly upset his wife and the lady who was present in the the pub. All that upset and angst to improve the circulation figures of a newspaper.

Rugby players are high spirited and not all of them are or should be expected to be tee-totallers. They do plenty of damage to themselves on the training ground or playing real matches much more damage than a few drinks; but then they are playing for their country so that is different. They represent their country but they are not national possessions. No doubt members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra go out for a few beers and glasses of wine when they are on tour but the world never gets to know about it and for good reason - we do not need to know. Why get sanctimonious about rugby players?
If a group of rugby players are rude or act lewdly to a hotel chamber maid then it is a different matter to going out boozing in a local pub. That is wrong as no-one deserves to be treated like that. The players concerned owned up and apologised formally to the chamber maid, this should have been the end of the story and the world did not need to know about it.

Fining a rugby player because he is wearing the wrong sort of gum shield which offends the commercial sensibilities of the sponsors is beyond the pale. The gum shields are made to fit the player and protect him from serious injuries. The organisers of the world cup should be protecting players from this kind of commercial bullying as it is the players and their supporters who are generating the income for both the sponsors and the organisers. Without the players and supporters the commercial sponsors would not be able to generate any income at all. Can it be any wonder that players chose to go out and get drunk when they are under that sort of pressure.

Of course, the England players are now being heavily criticised for being knocked out of the World Cup at the quarter finals. They did not play very well against France. France are one of the top teams and can beat anyone when they play well but the press have not noticed this fact.
The team did not play badly because of the silly antics: they were simply not good enough. One bad performance and you go back home and this is the simple rule in a knockout competition.

Unfortunately for England, the television and press ratings war results in the team being portrayed as heroes when performances are going well even though they have not won anything. They are then portrayed as devils when things go wrong and the silly antics are pushed further into the foreground. This type of media exposure probably has more of an effect on team morale than having a few drinks. When media pundits portray the team, unjustifiably, as favourites to win, the public and player expectation becomes too high and complacency leads to defeat. It is better to be in the position of Wales, they keep out of the eye of the press and pundits and do their drinking in quite bars well away from view. They might even pull off a surprise using this approach and get to the final. Their touring activities remain on the back pages where they belong.

If the England team are guilty of anything then it is naivety. Naivety that the press and media will not leave them alone and that some members of the public and press expect them to be paragons of virtue.

To cap it all, one of the England players, from Samoa, gets fined by the Rugby Union (RU) for jumping off a Ferry whilst on his way back with his team mates from an island visit to, of all places, a vineyard. No doubt they were tasting lemonade. The New Zealand police saw fit only to give him a warning but because of the publicity he was charged GBP3,000 by the RU for the privilege of jumping off a ferry and having a swim. Damn it, he is from Samoa and probably swims as well as he plays rugby. Do we really need to know that he dived off a ferry? Lets hope England does not frighten him off to return home to play rugby. On the very same day that the the swim made front page news, religious violence had broken out again in Cairo and this is the type of news that we really need to know about.

Lets hope we can get our sense of humour and proportion back and leave the rugby, football and sports reporting to just the back pages. Then one of our British teams might have a fair crack at winning one of the sporting prizes.