I had a rather unusual day yesterday, completeley taken up by watching a game that I am only moderately familiar with. That game is rugby union. I have always loved playing most sports as a kind of Jack of all, master of none, including cricket (moderate/poor), football (useful), badminton (not bad), golf (useful), tennis (poor) and table tennis (moderate/poor) all of which I have had brief love affairs with before giving up like a spoilt child and moving on to something else when I can’t get any better, golf being one of the the most notable. I just couldn’t take it any more after stalling on a handicapp of 11, and my expensive clubs now remain in the cupboard gathering cobwebs. Tennis is my latest venture and whilst I am struggling with the game itself, it is doing my tourettes syndrome the world of good, especially on my pathetic backhand that is so crushingly bad it resembles a forward defensive in cricket. However, one sport I have never tried since I was about fourteen is rugby, as it has just never gripped me in a way other sports have done. I have mentioned my fear of rugger on blogs before, but I think my avoidance of participating boils down to a few main reasons that I will explain in the next paragraph.

Firstly, some may call me a coward, but I  must confess that I have never really fancied the prospect of having my spine snapped in two whilst sticking my head either up the anus, in to the armpit, or anywhere near the sweating testicles of another male, it feels strangely homo-erotic and unappealing to me. As well as this, I really don’t fancy being on the wrong end of vicious two fingered eye gouging, it is something that fills me with horror, as does the thought of being spear tackled. If you have not seen a spear tackle before, it is a terrifying, barbaric and illegal act that takes place when an opponent hits you in the tackle at a fearsome rate, flipping you upside down before proceeding to plough the playing field with your head. The only consolation is that if  he gets caught, the administer of this act is rightly sent off, however, the obvious downside is that you are heading towards the back of an ambulance on a stretcher with a group of paramedics who are frantically trying tp put your head back on. Call me a cissy, but that is not my idea of fun.

So, first off yesterday, I arose early to watch the much anticipated Rugby World Cup Semi-Final between the unpredictable French and a young and emerging Welsh side who have lit the tournament up so far. Little did I know that I was about to witness a sporting tragedy that would be talked about for decades to come, such was the injustice of it all. This was right up there with the “Hand of God” moment that wrecked England’s World Cup football dream in 1986. I began watching the game as a neutral, but I was soon transformed in to a temporary Taff as Wales suffered a combination of misfortune and injustice in the first twenty minutes of the game, firstly losing a key player to injury and then having their captain and talisman wrongly sent off for an alleged spear tackle as mentioned above. It was not a spear tackle, even I knew that, but in an inexplicable moment of madness, the referee made a call so bad that it could end his career.

What followed was a perversely enjoyable battle against the odds as the Welsh, a man down, somehow gathered momentum in the face of adversity. God, did they try, it was a herculean effort, but if you were watching, you just knew that this was going to be a heroic failure featuring conversions and penalties agonisingly missing the target and match winning situations being repelled by last ditch French defending as they clung on to a 9-8 lead. Of course, it all ended in Welsh tears that flowed from New Zealand back to the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff that was packed with 60,000 supporters watching on a big screen. Back in the days when I used to watch the England football team, I witnessed dramatic hard luck stories v Argentina (’86, ’98) West Germany (’90) and united Germany (’96) but for the Welsh, this was worse than bad luck, it was a total injustice in a game that they would otherwise have won comfortably. The Welsh will try to console themselves by taking pride in the heroics of their team, but in reality, the actions of one man (the referee) have ruined the World Cup as a spectacle as Wales would have been worthy and exciting finalists. Sadly for them, opportunities at World Cup semi-finals don’t come along every week.