Please excuse the poor form of quoting some gobshite from The Other Place, but I, er...
he had this to say, and HE can’t be arsed to type it all out again...
—————
earl the beaver wrote:
At school we had a common theme distilled into us:
1. The referee is always right
2. If the referee makes a mistake refer to point 1.
Mortal injury to thread.
BokJock wrote:
If you think whining about match officials is cool and modern then you are the one that is wrong, son.
Ouch. Thread barely hanging on
camroc1 wrote:
What Erasmus did is akin to attacking the very foundations of our game.
Thread dead. Finito. Kaputt. Good night, Vienna. Goeie nag, Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality. The fat waterboy has sung.
We all consider ourselves 'rugby people'. Yes, there will be 'football people', 'golf people', etc., but those aren't really common expressions. 'Rugby people' is because there is a code to this sport that differentiates us, not just from followers/players of other sports, but from other sport, period. There are plenty of people who
only follow rugby because they believe - rightly or wrongly - that rugby's 'code' is what sport
should be like, but rarely is.
(And, of course, there are some big, ugly, ungainly lumps who follow only rugby because no-one else will have them / they were shit at every other sport on the planet
, but that's not relevant here...)
I am not equating The Code with The Laws - this is about how you follow, not play, the game - the set of principles, traditions, cultural features, etc., that we 'rugby people' all hold dear.
Although we may all hold The Code dear, it has never been written down, nor is there consensus as to its contents. There are probably as many subtle variants of The Code, as many permutations of its constituent principles, as there are Rugby People.
There are some uncontroversial - or 'soft'- principles that would appear, I should think, in everyone’s variant of The Code, e.g.:
- You can rock up to any rugby club in the world as a fellow Rugby Person and get a game or, at least, a warm reception should you just want to drink a beer and catch a game. Even Dozy or Globus. Even QP (RIP). This is obviously not unique to rugby but, coupled with rugby's global position as a niche sport, it certainly helps to build the sense of belonging to a geographically large, but nonetheless select, club
- You can sit with opposition fans and exchange stories, drinks and songs rather than blood, which is obviously one of those bits of The Code that makes quite a few rugby people feel superior to their oikball equivalents. Whoops, I
must stop doing that…
- No matter what (legal) violence has been meted out (or received) during the game, you ALWAYS shake hands with the opposition, and you'll probably buy them a beer also. Other sports have similar codes, obviously – but it’s the juxtaposition (*spit*) of that degree of physical violence with that degree of subsequent camaraderie
on the same afternoon which is fairly weird. I dunno, maybe MMA/UFC fighters get pissed together and form lifelong friendships after trying to kill each other, but I'd guess it wasn't the norm.
And there are cultural differences within the The Code - a Scots or Irish Rugby Person will insist that The Code necessitates absolute silence when a penalty kick / conversion is being attempted, whereas Rugby People from many other countries would of course loudly greet an opposition kick, and therefore loudly disagree.
They'd still recognise each other as Rugby People, however; they'd still feel that they shared The Code.
I would like to suggest that, to Rugby People everywhere (even South Africa), there aren't many components of The Code that are as universally agreed upon as (with thanks to earl, BokJock & cammie, and with apologies for my presumptive editing of their critical observations):
1. The referee is always right
2. If the referee makes a mistake refer to point 1
3. Whining about match officials is never allowed, whether the whiners are fans, players or coaches
after the game. A degree of impassioned whining during a game can be tolerated (see: handshakes)
4. Any contravention of 1, 2 or 3 is a fundamental contravention of The Code of a Rugby Person
I've never put anyone on ignore, and I probably never will. But if you don't agree with the above list, then (to me) you are not a Rugby person, you are in the wrong place and are therefore either a conscious troll or an unconscious idiot who has yet to understand our sport (and perhaps never will).
Either way, you should f@ck right off.
Or don't. I don't care, because I'm here for the rugby [/globus] and other non-rugby chat with Rugby People. You will be wasting your time and bandwidth engaging with me or any other Rugby People, and I certainly won’t acknowledge your vexatious and/or cretinous efforts to interrupt us, much less dignify them with a response.
Genuine South African Rugby People such as BokJock
et al: you have my sympathy for your embarrassing compatriots (on this issue - God knows every country has their idiots who pretend to be Rugby People. Thanks to RE, however, it's your local heretics in the spotlight right now)
TL;DR?
Good luck for Saturday, my bokkish buddies. I hope we give you a game, and it’s The Rugby we remember.