The Sandstone Blog
Our national sport
Rugby is the greatest game. Played as it should be it is the greatest sport. Those of us who played it, and are now past it, almost invariably remember our rugby years as among the best of our lives. The Clubs I was a member of, in Glasgow, Paisley and here in Highland, were community affairs where wives (‘wife’ wasn’t a bad word in those days) would come along and help, children were welcome, and sporting endeavour and comradeship were paramount.
There were always thugs in the game, many with high reputations, and I am saddened to remember that I left the field at age 32 with a double compound fracture of the jaw after a cowardly attack by just such a player. Sad because that day I also left First Fifteen Rugby behind and that was no way to bow out. The back injury I had been carrying for years worsened and I was obliged to retire at the end of the season having returned to play the last four games in the 4th Fifteen, the 3rd Fifteen, the 2nd Fifteen and then, aagh, the 2nd Fifteen again.
The Scottish Rugby Union was reluctant to act after the attack and it is to the credit of Highland Rugby Club that they forced the issue. The player involved, as I recall, was banned for eight games. There I leave it. I made a point of not allowing myself to be embittered at the time. When you enter sport you know that such things, and much worse, can and do happen.
These memories came back to me after watching South African Coach Peter De Villiers’s astonishing defence of Springbok Schalk Burger after his attempt to blind Luke Fitzgerald in the early stages of their Second Test against the Lions last week. After praising Burger’s character, ignoring his long history of violence on the field, he goes on to tell us, ‘Rugby is a contact sport and so is dancing . . . get some tutus and get a great dancing show on’.
Progressive liberals watching De Villiers’s performance will find few of their boxes left unticked by the end of the interview. I was reminded of the losing team who trooped into their changing room to find a row of sanitary towels had been laid out for them by the opposing coach. That particular taunt is better left until after your side has won.
Schalk Burger should have been sent from the field and banned for at least a season. There should be no place for his particular brand of thuggery in any part of society. Sadly, there is always an apologist. Even more sadly, there are young players watching who will get the idea that Burger’s way is the right way, or at least the winner’s way.
If we must have a national sport I would rather it was rugby. For the most part it brings out the best in people. The Rugby Club, and Clubhouse, are social centres as football clubs are not, certainly not at the high levels. It is football that is widely taken to be our national sport even though, at all but two grounds crowds of only a few measly thousands are attracted. For some reason football brings out the worst in people. The same wander around You Tube took me to a number of Old Firm crowd videos. You can visit for yourself and hear the British nationalists and Irish nationalists taunting each other with a will.
I will go to my grave proclaiming that this problem is a nationalist one, not essentially religious in nature and only when that is accepted can we begin to find an answer. However cynically we may view the British Government’s Armed Forces Day it was only in Glasgow that we had an active demonstration against it. The demonstrators’ point was not disapproval of British actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. The point was Ireland, not only Northern Ireland over the last forty or so tortured years but the whole long twisted history. The point is a massive and sustained failure of integration.
Football attracts this kind of thing pretty well all over the world. To my knowledge the worst example is in Belgrade, but emergent football in Africa has its violence, as have Argentina and Brazil. Strange loyalties, minor and major, ancient hatreds, find their focus in football grounds and outside them as with no other activity. Scotland’s national sport only attracts crowds of many thousands when the ancient sore of British Irish relations takes us eyeball to eyeball. Football as a business needs hate.
For the past seventy days I have been following Manny Gorman on his unmotorised round of the Corbetts. You can read the blog he and his wife Brenda, and several supportive friends, have been posting here http://corbettrun.blogspot.com/.
Manny was interviewed by BBC Radio Scotland on Friday 3rd July on top of Ben Loyal after completing. His athletic achievement was tremendous, as was his mental, even spiritual, achievement. Manny didn’t get it easy. On the Galloway hills he was pasted by foul weather. He took a leg strain that, of course, he was unable to rest. He missed his two sons. Against all this were days of wonderful weather and amazing views, not to mention the sheer exhilaration (a long, distant memory for me) that comes with being superbly fit and stretching yourself to the limit.
He began by completing the island Corbetts as the somewhat feted crew of John and Anne Allen in Finlandia, the successor yacht to Ticoyo (now immortalised in CAIRNGORM JOHN). From Ben Loyal Manny told the nation that this part of the journey alone would have made the whole thing worthwhile. Remembering John’s competence and hospitality on Ticoyo I can understand why. On the mainland Manny cycled and ran everywhere. Yes, he ran up the mountains.
Manny would not have had a chance without Brenda. She drove the van, cooked the food, and accompanied him now and again on her own bike. No doubt she was with him through the worst of it, the inevitable low times when he felt he couldn’t go on; but, go on he did. The final test for them both was when she came off her bike on the evening before completion and broke her shoulder so badly she would need five hours of reconstructive surgery. In his final blog Manny has this to say:-
‘I was completely crushed on Thursday night with Brenda’s news. I wasn’t going to do the final day, it was all very dark. Hills didn’t matter then…but they do. They get your head straight again, they clear the cobwebs away and flush the mind clean. I hid in the van that night not wanting to face anyone except my 2 boys, and after the head spinning for hours and virtually no sleep I just had to do what Brenda wanted me to do - finish it.’
I am not embarrassed to report that I filled up on reading that. I do again now. For me the case is long since made that our real National sport takes place on the Scottish Hills. There are more people on them at weekends than are in football grounds. The comradeship and respect that Manny’s journey inspires is obvious, and permanent. The preparation the hills give us for the rest of life is demonstrated to be immense.
Let me repeat an essential part of Manny’s unconsciously brilliant closing statement. Readers can make their own comparisons with the hate filled taunts of Old Firm fans and Peter De Villiers’ stupid defence of a player who actually tried to blind an opponent.
‘[The hills] . . . get your head straight again, they clear the cobwebs away and flush the mind clean.’