SPECTATOR SPORT
Who cares any more?
Simon Barnes
PERHAPS in the end it comes down to the shape of the ball. A ball is a sphere, a kind of perfection. To make a ball into an oval shape is an act of wilful perversity, a crime against nature. There are two oval ball codes: Rugby Union and Rugby League. Both are modern sporting disasters, The century-long tale of the disagreement between the two codes is bizarre enough: a story of the eternal English confusion of social class with moral rightness. But instructive as all this is, it has been con- signed to the dustbin of history. Nowadays both codes are all money and television con- tracts and sponsors, and you can't tell who are the men and who are the pigs any more.
Both games are thoroughly modern, professional, well-adjusted, well-televised, international, media-friendly horror stories. Rugby League sold out with such eagerness that one is tempted to wonder if they even got round to asking the price. The winter game sold itself up for a tele-friendly make- over as a summer game under a new banner of perfectly honed naffness: 'Super League'. This gained a nice television contract from Sky. All it lost was the essential rhythm of the sport. The game is now there to fill the television hours at a time when there is no football. Nice idea if you like being second- class, but has anyone told them that this summer will be taken up with five solid weeks of World Cup footy? The game has made itself a sideshow. This has alienated the followers from the sport's heartland without winning any new ones. Thus they have lost their rootsiness without gaining the faddishness of football. If, or perhaps when, Sky turns to another gimmick (a simple ending of the close sea- son in football, perhaps) where will Rugby League be? Not all that frightfully super.
But when Rugby League stands next to Rugby Union, it suddenly looks sane — and solvent, which takes a bit of doing. Rugby Union: where shall I start, as I sum up the troubles? Nowhere. There are too many issues, too many rows, too much non- sense. It wearies me even to think about it.
Every day brings us a fresh supply of hor- ror, indignation, confrontation, the end of Rugby Union as we know it. The players are going to take over the world. England is going to become part of South Africa. The Celtic nations are going to be, well, jolly upset, anyway. Change of plan: no player is ever going to play for England again, Change of plan: oh yes, they are. Everyone is broke apart from the players, who watch the gravy train charge towards the buffers at bullet speed.
The notion of compassion fatigue — that weariness brings an end to the possibilities of caring — has been explored at length in the real world. rugby of both codes pro- duces some splendid sport, but these end- less rows about money have brought about sport's equivalent of compassion fatigue.
I feel for the Rugby correspondents who must report the daily routine of politicking and posturing. They went into the job in love with the oval ball game's mixture of mayhem and grace. But now, instead of crooning over the reverse scissors move, they must negotiate the legal problems of the latest stabbing behind the arras. They write knowing that the world is utterly fed up with their subject. Mr and Mrs Brown may serve wonderful food and drink, but they row every time we go round, and the food turns to ashes in our mouths. So we always refuse their invitations. The same thing has happened with rugby, Perhaps the way forward is to time-travel through the next decade, and pick up the two codes once they have sorted themselves out. They can each go to hell in their own way so far as I am concerned. A plague on both their houses.
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