A grand slamming: Why I’m not mourning the death of Welsh rugby

Matt Howells

Alas, poor rugby, I knew it well. I’m currently holding what they call a football here in Australia, as one of the Year 10 students in the school where I work as an English literature teacher kicked it at another boy intentionally.

It is now rightly confiscated. It has identical dimensions to a rugby ball despite being used for Australian rules football. And just like Yorick’s skull in Hamlet, I feel I am looking at the remnant of what used to give many people so much joy, but is now deservedly dead.

I write this piece two months after undergoing surgery for a broken hand after an accident involving a pothole (say no more), and despite the stiffness and mild pain, I simply had to return to the keyboard to acknowledge a major shift in Welsh culture which is happening before our eyes.

No, I’m not talking about education, the Welsh language or even TV singing competitions this time around; I am intent on writing a schandenfreude-tinged elegy to the idiotic world of egg-chasing known as rugby and its welcome, and hopefully irreversible, demise.

I’m sure many of you are snarling at your screens, but you must pay strict attention, for this will be an evisceration like no other, a grand slamming of the brutal game.

My reasons are fourfold: rugby is awful. It’s dangerous. It’s dumb. I loathe it. 

Why? Because we’ve been duped. For decades, many of us in Wales were brought up as if it was a religion, as if it was inherent to Welsh culture and identity, as if it mattered.

You were persona non grata if you took no interest, worse still if you were forced to play it at school and outrightly refused to.

But finally, it’s OK to say that it doesn’t matter, and that it never did. And many are seeing the light and coming out as rugby-indifferent or abandoning their former fervency to pursue other interests and pursuits, such as taste and sanity. 

There are, of course, sound reasons for this awakening. The Welsh team’s woeful performance in recent years, in addition to the sight of half-empty stadia, nosebleedingly expensive ticket prices, and devastating corruption and sleaze at the WRU have all played their part. Even the photos of empty bars in Cardiff during last weekend’s France game are being circulated here on the other side of the world.

And it’s not just the national-level game that’s suffering. The ill-thought out regional system is collapsing, grass roots rugby is dying a death as the younger generation just aren’t interested. Kudos to them.

I am sure the last straw for many was this headline from a few years ago, where a fully grown man vomited on a six-year old at the Principality Stadium after drinking too much. After all, the game itself has produced a drinking culture that has gone way out of hand and is more embarrassing to me as a Welshman than recitation performances at the National Eisteddfod.

Having spent over a decade living in Cardiff, the cityscape during an international match would make me cringe. The lairiness and unhinged behaviour on the streets was shameful. I would often arrange to visit family and friends elsewhere during those weekends and it was actually a big part of my decision to leave the city. 

It’s also ten years since the Welsh football team competed in Euro 2016 in France. Most of us will remember it, the genuine elation of each win, the incredibly inclusive nature of the Welsh FA and the surprisingly civilised behaviour of the fans when abroad not to mention its embrace of the Welsh language and singing. And no Max Boyce in sight.

I think of my 14-year old self on the frozen school rugby pitch. I can still feel the cheap nylon against my skin, the fetid smell of the boys’ changing room. I’m a tall guy, and was the tallest in my year. I should have been on the team, others would say.

Despite my academic and extra curricular achievements, the only thing the principal could say was “it’s a pity you don’t play rugby”. Mr Davies, it may be over 25 years ago, but kindly get fucked.

I recall just standing there on the pitch. Arms folded, refusing to move. A brave thing to do in 90s west Wales. And I’m still that boy in many ways, standing bullish when someone tells me that rugby is intrinsic to our identity, that there is something wrong with me or that I’m not truly Welsh if I don’t like it.

I also want to pay my respects to north Walians, who have probably had to endure the stereotype of Welsh people being rugby-mad far more than us hwntws despite their lack of interest. I feel their pain!

Now this is where I should slot in some kind of rebuttal where I advocate for a solution for the sport and that it’s not all that bad.

I admire the unique, working class roots of the sport as opposed to other British nations, but the horrific injuries and even deaths caused by playing this sport speak for themselves and should be reason enough for it to be discouraged, and I’m genuinely struggling to find anything sincere to say. Nah, sorry. Indifference is all you’re getting from me.

If you were also raised with the unbearable din of Jonathan Davies’ commentary on a rainy Sunday, know that you’re not alone. If you also were forced to play this game against your will, I hear you.

Thankfully, children these days are offered far more by their schools’ PE departments and the trope of the psychotic-bastard sports teacher is a thing of the past.

Most household names of the ‘golden era’ of Welsh rugby have long left us and many rugby clubs frequented by people like Barry Welsh’s Gwyn are emptying out.

To the 80-minute nationalists who derive their Welshness from daffodil hats and big-budget BBC One Wales Six Nations ad campaigns as they mumbled the anthem, your time is up.

To those fans who would die for their team yet pour scorn on genuine expressions of Welsh culture and identity, such as its language, literature, music, politics, and religious heritage, it’s time to give up the ghost.

And to those true fans who are neither of the above and despair at the current state of the sport, I’m genuinely sorry, but your hobby is not my culture and identity.

It will only be a matter of time until someone knocks on my office door asking for his ball back. Rugby is barely played here in Victoria, but for me this still looks too much like the Gilbert rugby ball of my adolescence.

The temptation to puncture it is strong, but I think I’ll just leave it under my desk to gather dust, and forget about it.