The threat to rugby

Rachel Johnson wonders whether Earth has anything to show more fair than 15 beefy rugby players, especially when it’s raining. But lawyers take a more calculating view of the game

The Rugby Football Union lot stuck down in Twickenham (Dee, Dave, you’ve been a great help, cheers) have, I know, been looking forward to receiving their copies of this week’s Spectator with more than their usual anticipation.

I told them that I wanted to write a piece, to be published just before the World Cup final, that would put rugby into some kind of perspective; in other words, I intimated, The Spectator would be saying that the rugby was the most wonderful thing that has happened to England for as long as anyone could remember, if not the most important thing ever to have happened in the history of the world.

Does Earth, actually, have anything to show more fair than the sight of the rugby pitch, where 15 fit and beefy young men, with thighs like hams and foreheads like rams, are pounding another 15 into submission, leaping into the air like burly salmon at the line-outs, or breaking free to perform heart-stopping weaving runs in those tight white shirts and shorts? If it does, I cannot think of it.