Over a century ago a schoolboy picked up a football and ran away holding it.  Unfortunately he was never caught and punished.  Worse, the sport of rugby was born.  Now English eyes have turned to the six nations championships. 

Questions will be asked about drift defences, whether Johnny Wilkinson’s return from the dead was helped by the fact he looks like a zombie, and why on earth they couldn’t find a round ball to play with.  The real and only question will be dodged.  The only point of interest in the entire history of rugby has never been debated: Was that schoolboy in the box when he first picked up the football and so was it a penalty or not? 

The middle classes have taken a foul and called it a sport.  It doesn’t change anything.  They can say they have an official world cup and should be an Olympic sport but it doesn’t matter to me.  The world cup final doesn’t count; it should have been abandoned after five minutes for persistent handball.  It wasn’t a contest, just a game of football gone wrong. 

What makes the presence of rugby worse is rugger buggers lording it over football and sniffing over little things like diving.  They constantly claim Rugby is a better sport because there’s no diving like in football.  NEWSFLASH… that’s because it’s a different sport.  There are no illegal wheel arches in the premiership but that doesn’t mean football is a better sport than formula one.  It just is. 

If rugby wants to boast about a lack of cheating then maybe it should get some rules.  Well understandable ones, not like the strange ones they stop the game for every five seconds (which apparently don’t involve cheating, just one fat guy prepared to risk breaking another fat guy’s neck in order to win a scrum.)  Rugby types are happy to sneer at Wayne Rooney’s outbreak of happy stamping at the world cup but ignore the fact that if he’d done that on a rugby field they’d all have simply yelled, “Great rucking rooners”.  He’d fit right in and a few collapsed scrummages might improve his looks. 

In conclusion I suggest we retaliate.  Get a few mates together and join a rugby team.  First game, one of you goes long and into the traditional centre forward’s position, then the others get the ball and hoof it forwards to him under the posts.  He scores.  When the egg chasers complain about offside or something tell them it’s not a foul but instead the invention of a much better, cleaner sport.  Call it football. 

By Joseph Bleazard