Rugby is terrifying but it is all we have

All the attention at the weekend was not on the FF Ardfheis but on a victory in the violent sport of rugby

THERE ARE those of us who have been on the run from rugby all our lives. Not all the refuseniks are girls, but the majority of us do live on the east coast. We have seen the unacceptable face of rugby – indeed some of us were born pretty adjacent to it – and we found little in it to love.

All that shouting, the thick necks, the embarrassing nicknames, the cold, the jerky nature of the game. Those desolate Saturday afternoons when you had to keep quiet so grown men could shout at the television. And the fans on the streets and in the pubs afterwards, sniggering giant schoolboys oblivious to the rest of the population throwing their collective eyes to heaven.

Yet rugby has crept up on us now that so much else has fallen away. Munster versus the All-Blacks was the best Irish theatre of the last year. You didn’t have to understand it to love it.

And on Saturday, as rugby fans tumbled out of bed muttering about it being “this day of days” (I swear to God), and the morning revealed that the southside supermarkets were full of middle-aged men buying drink in epic quantities, you did get the feeling that some sort of communal spirit was stirring.

You could see handfuls of English fans walking along the pavements of the Belfield dual-carriageway, having booked into the same BBs that they had used before Lansdowne Road was closed for refurbishment. Even the pubs were full, a sight not seen even over Christmas.

In the middle of all of this the Fianna Fáil Ardfheis festered away, entirely irrelevant.

The silence of suburbia during a rugby match is a lovely thing. It brought back memories of Ireland’s first real soccer World Cup, back when success was a surprise instead of a memory. During that competition Kathryn Holmquist reported a blind man on a deserted Dublin street, smiling as he heard the cheering coming from the pubs which indicated an Irish goal.

There are those of us who prefer the analysis to the game, and it must be said, if we are to take a brief break from hurling perfectly justified abuse at RTÉ that its rugby analysis makes great television. Even those of us who don’t understand rugby can understand the soap opera that is Hooky and Popey, and that Conor O’Shea is not allowed to speak even though he knows what he is talking about.

But on Saturday the rugby heads surpassed themselves by having Jack Kyle on their programme. If they had produced Santa himself it couldn’t have been more surprising. Of course, they didn’t let Jack Kyle talk either. But it was enough that he was there, handsome and lively.

Of the match itself, there is little for an ignorant observer to say. It’s a fairly safe bet that some spectators died of heart attacks whilst watching it. I know, I know, it’s what they would have wanted. Reports from Croke Park indicate that the crowd was a little subdued afterwards, and no wonder. Many of them had watched their extravagant wagers on a huge Irish victory go south.

But it was good to go into town on Saturday night, with the requisite middle-aged drunk on the bus who was getting no change out of the driver or out of any of his fellow passengers.

It was nice to walk down O’Connell Street at 10.30pm on a Saturday night and see it crowded with people for once, in stark contrast to the deserted and darkened wind tunnel it has become in recent months.

(Is the dim lighting on O’Connell Street some sort of design affectation or is it an ecologically-inspired initiative? It would be nice to know as you stumble through the shadows, your path illuminated only by the light from Burger king.)

There was a hot dog stand on O’Connell Bridge. There were the girls in full slap, mini skirts, heroic heels. There were the boys trailing after them. There were a couple of men in kilts. On the Luas there was a lady with her Ireland banner neatly rolled up , saying that Dublin had become very cosmopolitan.

On Sunday there was the comprehensive analysis of the sports pages and the phone calls to other fans, during which people seemed to say “Jesus, I know” a lot. We were relieved. We didn’t really care about U2’s tax arrangements or what Brian had told the party faithful. All the attention, all the hope, was focused on a small victory in a violent sport. Rugby is terrifying now, even for those of us who remember JPR Williams knocking Mike Gibson unconscious off the ball. We can remember the outrage when that happened, and the grown ups shouting of Williams, “And he’s a doctor! A bloody doctor!”

But rugby is still terrifying now. Even George Hook has been honest enough to say that when his son played rugby he used to stand on the sidelines and shudder. Nowadays even the most devoted rugby fan would not put up too much of a struggle if his sons were to decide to play GAA.

So, it is dangerous, awkward, unlovely and riven with rows. But at the moment even the refuseniks have to say that Irish rugby is a good thing. Or, to put it another way, it’s all we have.