Swing low

The English press have naturally gone over the top on rugby after England beat Australia on saturday.
The players are heroes to a man, the coach is a genius and the game is what kids should be playing.

The only decenting voices are coming from the football world, particularly ex-players, who are getting very defensive about comparisons with rugby.
Not surprising because football and its players have been digging themselves a hole over the past year and are still digging.

Everybody excepts that the players are wildly over paid and the list of assault and serious sexual assualt cases, players ducking drug tests, the England team almost refusing to play on two occasions, things being thrown at fans and today a player finally being arrested after fleeing a car crash on saturday night where a man was killed makes the rugby guys look like white knights.

I heard SkySports pundit and former player Rodney Marsh asked today if football could learn any lessons from rugby, on and off the pitch, and he said ‘not a thing’.
There were between 30-40,000 England fans mixed in with Australians at the Telstra stadium on saturday, all having a drink and good time and no one looking for a fight. Afterwards the players went out and partied with the fans.

This will never happen at a football World Cup but if the players looked even half as commited when they lined up for the national anthems as the rugby boys, they might get the country’s favourite game back in the good books.

That old saying ‘Rugby’s a game for thugs played by gentlemen, football’s a game for gentlemen played by thugs’ has never looked more true.

Tags: Football Soccer