Saturday’s soapbox is yours to use as you will – within the bounds of decency and absence of defamation. You’re welcome to look back or forward, discuss issues of the moment, to pontificate, ponder or point us to something of interest, to educate, elucidate or entertain, amuse, bemuse or simply muse, but not abuse.
Apropos of this, Spiro Zavos writes:
The Rugby World Cup trophy commemorates William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School lad who was supposed to have picked up the ball and run with it during a game on the Big Field in 1823. The point of World Rugby iconising Webb Ellis is to establish the truth that rugby must be a running and passing game, not a kicking game like football.
As the wording on the commemorative stone at Rugby School reads: “William Webb Ellis with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it.”
England’s Bully-Boy, No-Rugby tactics against the South African Springboks in the second semi-final of RWC 2023 represents, then, a travesty of all the best qualities inherent in the running rugby game that have emerged through the play of millions of players in over 100 countries since Webb Ellis’ supposed “fine disregard” for the kicking-only game.
So right now rugby lovers around the world need to rise up in protest against England’s brain-dead rejection of the essential running rugby ethic. We need to demand action in terms of significant law changes from World Rugby to thwart England’s shameful regression to a No-Rugby game deployed against the Springboks.
As the nuns used to tell us at convent school: “What does it profit a man who gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his immortal soul?”
In rugby terms: “What does it profit a team to sell out the soul of rugby for a RWC semi-final win?” . . .
This match-up on Sunday morning of the two best teams in RWC history, with one of them to became a four-times Rugby World Champion, looks like being a rugby game for the ages.
Tying this essay together, then, in an effort to make sense of last weekend’s RWC 2023 semi-finals, is this liturgy:
The rugby they play in Heaven was played by the All Blacks against the Pumas.
The rugby they play in Purgatory was played by the Springboks against England.
The rugby they play in Hell was played by England against the Springboks.
All fingers and toes crossed, the heavenly team wins tomorrow morning.
P.S.
Can someone who knows more about rugby than I do (which will be most of you) explain why the All Blacks keep kicking the ball and losing possession?
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