By nice fluke, there has been a heady clash of cultures over the past few days, with comparisons anything but invidious. The intriguing bundle of important international football matches has converged precisely with both rugby league’s grand final and the closing stages of rugby union’s World Cup in France. The ubiquitous radio phone-ins and the letters pages of the public prints have been enthused with discussion on each code’s relative merits, particularly on the simplicity or otherwise of the respective rules and the discipline, chivalry and civility of the players. The pros and cons, the cut and thrust of the polemic in many cases has led to penitent crossover and even total conversion. Siding with both apostasy and proselytism, the columnists have naturally been fanning the flames.
The Guardian’s ace interviewer and diehard football nut, Simon Hattenstone, dived headfirst into the confessional: for 35 years, the Mancunian admitted, he had contemptuously scoffed at rugby as legalised assault by cauliflower-eared, double-barrelled toffs.
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