Balls

I asked for inspiration for new rants and sport was mentioned a few times, specifically how shit England are at all of them.

Yes, we might well be shit, but does it matter?

Rugby holds no appeal to me whatsoever. My disdain for it began as an 11-year-old.  That was the first time most of the boys at my comprehensive school had been given the chance to play.

I hated it from the first moment.

“Jones, you’re a big lad. You’ll be a good forward,” said my games teacher, who clearly didn’t notice how shit I actually was at the sport.

I soon discovered that being in the scrum was the worst thing in the world. It’s possibly the most homo-erotic ritual in all of sport and there was definite inappropriate touching at times, but it was the fact that every single time I was in one that I felt as if my skull was going to be cracked like a walnut that bothered me most.

I was never the fastest runner, so allowing me to hold the ball at any point was a mistake. I couldn’t really pass it very well either. There wasn’t a single aspect of rugby that I excelled at.

Despite my shitness and overall lack of enthusiasm for the game, I was picked to represent the school. “It’s an honour,” the same idiot teacher told me.

I was forced to turn up for school matches, at weekends, wearing full school uniform. I would endure bus drivers who laughed at me, thinking I was going to school on the wrong day and have to explain that I was wearing a tie and blazer on a Saturday morning because I was being forced against my will to participate in child cruelty. They never informed the authorities.

Unless there was a valid excuse, such as your own death, then there was no way to get out of playing. If you didn’t turn up, you’d get a week of detention.

We never won a single game I played in. Probably because nobody actually wanted to be there. Who would want to be standing in a muddy field in North Yorkshire in the middle of winter, fearing for their life as some behemoth knocks them to the floor with all the elegance of a bull browsing for a china tea service?

England have possibly been so pants in the Rugby World Cup because the players were forced to play against their will. I bet nobody thought about that.