“Rugby is a thug’s game played by gentleman while soccer is a gentleman’s game played by thugs.”
A common phrase uttered when comparing the two sports, mostly by the pro-rugby troupe when you consider the ideology being expressed. But aside from the on field matters, let’s take a look and what many consider to be the heart and soul of any sport. It’s not the multi-millionaire stars, it’s not the sponsors and it’s certainly not the owners and bigwig board members. The fans..
Soccer fans in Ireland, even without the absence of a major league (that’s an issue for another day), will follow teams religiously from August to May every single year. It’s almost ritual that Saturday is spent watching football or in some cases spending your day in work checking your phone or asking anyone at all for the latest info on the 3pm kick offs.
A lot of these fans will save money to make the trip to England to follow their teams in person and experience the atmosphere that you just don’t get in a League of Ireland game (Again, an issue for another day). It’s a commitment, it’s something that you can quite easily be found out on if you try to bluff it. It’s hard work to bluff your way through a sport for 9 months.
Rugby on the other hand is the ultimate bandwagon sport, particularly in Ireland, because it only exists for 8 weeks every year (and maybe another month if it’s a World Cup year). From the end of January into the beginning of March, Six Nations fever hits and all of those who wouldn’t know their Rob Henshaws from their Joe Rokocokos have all suddenly turned into green jersey wearing, Nigel Owens loving George Hook clones.
The lack of commitment needed to go down the local once a week for a month and rant about how handsome Tommy Bowe is or how Jonny Sexton is better in the tackle than ROG compared to spending 38 weeks of a year trying to compare the gameplay styles of Jose Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal is staggering.
Rugby has its core in Ireland, it has a very strong core too. A lot of genuine people who love the game and are embedded in local clubs across the country and as one of the people who will hold my hand up and acknowledge my lack of interest and know-how about the game, I can tell you from sheer curiosity that it also annoys them to see the feigned interest for the big international games.
It’s perfectly fine for people to tune into their national team in any sport to see how they are doing and hope for the best without shoving uneducated opinion down the throats of the educated. While Rugby is a fantastic sport in its own right, it needs to isolate itself from these sunshine fans who will be present in the Aviva Stadium to see Ireland but won’t be caught dead in Thomond Park on a freezing cold Friday night to see Munster play Treviso in the Pro12.
Rugby is the ultimate bandwagon sport because the big competitions happen in little bursts rather than take place across a whole season. The Heineken Cup has lost a lot of its glamour in recent times too with the fall apart of Irish teams at the hands of the big-spending French giants. International Rugby is the focal point in Ireland now and with those games being few and far between, it just makes it even easier to feign interest for those few precious weeks in Spring.
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“Rugby is a thug’s game played by gentleman while soccer is a gentleman’s game played by thugs.”
A common phrase uttered when comparing the two sports, mostly by the pro-rugby troupe when you consider the ideology being expressed. But aside from the on field matters, let’s take a look and what many consider to be the heart and soul of any sport. It’s not the multi-millionaire stars, it’s not the sponsors and it’s certainly not the owners and bigwig board members. The fans..
Soccer fans in Ireland, even without the absence of a major league (that’s an issue for another day), will follow teams religiously from August to May every single year. It’s almost ritual that Saturday is spent watching football or in some cases spending your day in work checking your phone or asking anyone at all for the latest info on the 3pm kick offs.
A lot of these fans will save money to make the trip to England to follow their teams in person and experience the atmosphere that you just don’t get in a League of Ireland game (Again, an issue for another day). It’s a commitment, it’s something that you can quite easily be found out on if you try to bluff it. It’s hard work to bluff your way through a sport for 9 months.
Rugby on the other hand is the ultimate bandwagon sport, particularly in Ireland, because it only exists for 8 weeks every year (and maybe another month if it’s a World Cup year). From the end of January into the beginning of March, Six Nations fever hits and all of those who wouldn’t know their Rob Henshaws from their Joe Rokocokos have all suddenly turned into green jersey wearing, Nigel Owens loving George Hook clones.
The lack of commitment needed to go down the local once a week for a month and rant about how handsome Tommy Bowe is or how Jonny Sexton is better in the tackle than ROG compared to spending 38 weeks of a year trying to compare the gameplay styles of Jose Mourinho and Louis Van Gaal is staggering.
Rugby has its core in Ireland, it has a very strong core too. A lot of genuine people who love the game and are embedded in local clubs across the country and as one of the people who will hold my hand up and acknowledge my lack of interest and know-how about the game, I can tell you from sheer curiosity that it also annoys them to see the feigned interest for the big international games.
It’s perfectly fine for people to tune into their national team in any sport to see how they are doing and hope for the best without shoving uneducated opinion down the throats of the educated. While Rugby is a fantastic sport in its own right, it needs to isolate itself from these sunshine fans who will be present in the Aviva Stadium to see Ireland but won’t be caught dead in Thomond Park on a freezing cold Friday night to see Munster play Treviso in the Pro12.
Rugby is the ultimate bandwagon sport because the big competitions happen in little bursts rather than take place across a whole season. The Heineken Cup has lost a lot of its glamour in recent times too with the fall apart of Irish teams at the hands of the big-spending French giants. International Rugby is the focal point in Ireland now and with those games being few and far between, it just makes it even easier to feign interest for those few precious weeks in Spring.
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Comments are closed.