Rugby and national sentiment
THERE'S something atavistically stirring about any rugby international. The anthems, the often ancient flags and banners. There's a thrill, a sense of the old physical contests of history repeating themselves (though thankfully within a framework that keeps the rough stuff within reasonable bounds). Twickenham I've always found especially evocative.
In this sense rugby probably is a war substititute, though in the most positive sense. Thirty men engage in physical struggle for 80 minutes to assert national honour. People daub themselves in war paint in the national colours; they wave the national flag. It's a high point in national sentiment.
It's a little surprising therefore to see how many players involved in the current World Cup in New Zealand actually don't have their origins in the country for which they are playing. In fact it is only Argentina, Georgia and Romania that have fielded teams 100 percent born and bred in their country.
Reader Eric Hodgson supplies an analysis based on where the players were born. Clearly this does not always coincide with nationality, nor does it take into account descent. But it's interesting all the same. To take the "senior" sides:
· Australia has seven "outsiders" in its squad – two from South Africa, two from New Zealand and one each from Fiji, Papua-New Guinea and Saudi Arabia.
· England has eight – Two from New Zealand and one each from South Africa, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, the USA, Kenya and Samoa.
· France has just two – One each from the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.
· Ireland has four – From the USA, New Zealand, Israel and Australia. (Who knew Ronan O'Gara was born in the USA?)
· South Africa has just one – That's Tendai "The Beast" Mtawarira, from Zimbabwe.
· New Zealand has four – Three from Samoa, one from Australia.
· Scotland has seven – Three from England, two from Australia and two from Hong Kong.
· Wales has five – Four from England and one from Tonga.
Has rugby always been this mixed up? In a sense, yes. John Allen played for South Africa and Scotland. Nick Labuschagne played for England and Natal. But there can be no doubt that professionalism, and the mobility that goes with it, has speeded up the process.
And so what? In those real battles long ago, there were always plenty of mercenaries offering their services where required.
Show some respect!
HERE'S a rah-rah-rah! for Springbok lock Bakkies Botha:
· Bakkies Botha is so strong he can tear a page out of Facebook.
· Bakkies Botha has already been to Mars; that's why there are no signs of life.
· Death once had a near-Bakkies Botha experience
· Bakkies Botha can slam a revolving door.
Hey, that's our man - Bakkies Botha!
Army ditty
THE ABOVE recalls a ditty/chant popular in army messes:
That was my brother, Sylvest'.
What's he got?
A row of forty medals on his chest,
Big chest!
He killed fifty bad men in the west,
He knows no rest!
Think of a man, hell's fire, don't push, just shove,
Plenty of room for you and me.
He's got an arm like a leg:
A lady's leg!
And a punch to sink a battleship,
Big ship!
It takes more than the navy and the air force
To put the wind up Sylvest'!
Punch-up
AND IN SIMILAR tough guy vein, a Russian billionaire who now owns two Fleet Street newspapers punched a fellow guest on a TV programme in Moscow the other night.
Alexander Lebedev, who owns the London Independent and the Evening Standard, punched and floored fellow-oligarch Sergei Polonsky during a discussion of the global financial crisis.
Later he said it was a pre-emptive blow as Polonsky was threatening to punch him.
You couldn't make it up. Not that long ago Lebedev was a KGB operative in the Cold War. Today he's a Fleet Street baron, a modern-day Beaverbrook .
Will BBC discussion programmes develop into cage fights? Watch this space!
Tailpiece
HOW MANY existentialists does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb itself symbolises a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity, reaching towards the ultimate horror of a maudlin cosmos of bleak, hostile nothingness.
Last word
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Mae West
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