How to watch rugby (or anything else) like a decent person
Sadly, for some people, enforcing the limits of how others enjoy things seems to be more fun than anything else in their lives.
At the time of writing, the first Six Nations Super Saturday rugby match of 2024 is coming to a close. It’s been well worth watching, with perennial last-place finishers Italy on a romp through Cardiff, up 24 to seven against Wales*.
There’s been drama, tension, surprise, and that perfect combination of prowess and mistakes that makes for good sport. As a starter for a three-course meal of rugby, it’ll do well on Yelp.
(*Note: It only got more compelling and dramatic from there, which is why this article is being published the day after Super Saturday and in the teeth of a grinding hangover.)
Or at least, I think that’s been the case.
I may be wrong because I am no expert on rugby; or any other sport.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m across the basic idea.
There is one bunch of big lads who think the odd-shaped ball would be best placed at one end of the pitch and another group of large chaps with a vastly different opinion. These two groups have, helpfully, decided to wear matching outfits so we can tell them apart and one guy is wearing another different shirt and shorts combo and doing his best to keep whatever passes for order.
I’ve got a decent grasp of that bit at least.
I’m also aware that there’s a bit of running, kicking, and just the right amount of gentlemanly violence to keep things interesting. It’s especially good fun watched live, with the chill of a winter’s afternoon having been taken off by a few glasses of some lovely, bubbly lager or regular sips of whisky snuck from a concealed hip flask beneath the inattentive gaze of a stadium security team who could be easily mistaken for looking the other way on purpose.
That’s the extent of what I know about what I’m watching from my sofa or foldaway plastic chair in Edinburgh’s impressive Murrayfield Stadium. Someone else will have to answer any questions about player development, team structure, tactics, plays, strategy, or the intricacies of the rules, multiple and complex as I understand them to be.
But that’s what makes it such a wonderful spectator sport, all that is required is an understanding of the basic concept and an appreciation for ability, tenacity, and the theatre of competition.
More experienced or committed rugby fans are, generally, good-natured about this and welcome the casual, occasional, and cultural fan aboard without much eye-rolling, provided they abide by some reasonable rules - such as not leaving early if attending a match in person. All are very fair and above board.
However, some do not and these odious cretins seem to take more joy from enforcing the acceptable definition of a “rugby fan” than they do from each tense ruck and scrum or triumphant try and conversion.
Rugby is far from unique in having this gate-keeping problem. Everything that has a fandom has it to one extent or another.
Some gamers, for example, believe that the folks who pick up a Nintendo Switch once in a while or play some innocuous block-based Tetris clone on their iPhone on the train or bus to work aren’t “real gamers.”
Some fans of particular bands aren’t considered “proper” unless they can tell any passing stranger their favourite obscure track or can produce a signed ticket stub from an early, “before they were famous” gig.
Some tedious individuals will scoff at the casual comic book fan or enjoyer of a movie franchise who has not seen and studied every frame and bought the merchandise of the entire series from initial concept art to the last word of the director’s cut.
Well, fuck them!
They’re no more the custodians of their supposed beloved interests than Bernard Mathews is a pal of turkeys.
It must be difficult to live with the pedantry, joylessness, self-entitlement, privilege, and arrogance that it takes to tell someone they aren’t interested in something “correctly”.
To attend a match, screening, concert, or book signing must be to put up with a constant, nagging worry, nestled in the back of a not-up-to-scratch mind, that one is somehow not fully present. The responsibility that these troubled souls take on, unprompted, unrequested, and unrequired as it is, must kick them out of the experience entirely.
It would at this stage be folly to ignore the sexism that often occurs in this kind of policing, as it seems to occur in all kinds of enforcement. For those of us male enough to usually avoid this subset of this kind of scrutiny, it’s pretty clear that women are often the primary targets of this unbearably snobby tone. I can only imagine how the women involved feel about it.
Women in video games, literature, the arts, and sport in particular, regularly have their legitimate interests accused of being insincere or inauthentic by the fun police. Whenever I’ve seen it happen personally, I’ve tried to be on the right side of it and help as I can. I believe most decent chaps, and most chaps are decent, do the same or want to. As is common when people get together, a minority give the decent majority an unfair amount of work to do. Bastards to a man.
If you’ve ever been written up on a trumped-up charge by these nasty individuals for perceived inauthentic interest in something, I invite you to consider the following by way of a soothing balm for the inevitable itchy ire they provoke.
Far from being the fair and proper constables of enjoying things that they present as, there’s usually a sadness in their eyes which gives away the reality.
I would propose that on the cavernous and echo-y inside of the head of someone calling into question the genuineness of another’s fandom lives the niggling doubt that their own love of whatever it is up for dispute. In an exquisite ironic twist, they suspect themselves of not being real fans most of all.
In the same way as someone who protests against people with an unorthodox gender expression can reliably be expected to have an internet history full of trans porn and a hidden stash of clothes, it’s often a case of protesting far too much.
They are, to being fans, what the ladies who visited Doctor Johnson when he published his dictionary to congratulate him on not including any rude words were to decency. Their insistence on looking them up betrays an interest beyond the purely academic.
If she had been around today, Mary Whitehouse’s incognito browsing mode would have been the most active in the country, to take a hypothetical example.
If, as is good and proper in a diverse and complex society, we want to make it as unencumbered as possible for anyone to pursue whatever interest they like, to whatever extent they like, then this kind of behaviour needs to be stopped.
We are all capable of it and many of us, to our shame, have dabbled in it because it does feel good in the way that leading a mob so loud that it drowns out your impure thoughts inevitably is.
But it should be resisted and, like other poor conduct, called out when possible.
So, the next time you see someone setting the boundaries of what is a “real fan”, whether it’s at a comic book convention or Twickenham, politely but firmly inform them that the casual, weekend, and ‘pick up and play’ fan’s money is just as valuable as theirs and that they perform a great service.
As professional wrestling in the late nineties found out, bringing in the casual observer to back up the die-hards brings more attention, support, and money to an interest, which can take it from niche to mainstream, resulting in a lot more of it to go around for everyone.
Surely this is what the fan of anything must want for his or her interest?
Unless the whole purpose is the exclusivity, in which case it is that of which they are a fan and not their purported passion.
Who is the “real” fan then?