My mother, a Quaker Maoist, wanted to ban football. It was the Seventies and hooliganism was a thing, and mum, who was Left-wing in a north London-y kind of way, didn’t think much of unruly working class people.
As with her view of nuclear weapons – “get rid of ours and ask the Russians to do the same later” – or of universal wearing of uniforms – “just issue them and people would stop going to clothes shops” – she was not sweating the details, but she did have a firm view that men caught in possession of round balls should be dealt with abruptly.
Dear mum – so much of her worldview seemed to me, even as a youngster, to be barmy, but the football thing? Maybe she was on to something. This Friday sees the start of a real sports tournament, the Rugby World Cup, during which time I will once again ask myself whether mother, after all, knows best: in fact we should all embrace our salvation from soccer.
The World Cup, played over the next month or so in Japan, will be watched by fans from Tonga to Kenya, Russia to New Zealand; even the USA, where it’s become a big deal in universities. And, of course, in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, both north and south.
If football really is our “national game” we are, as a group of nations, pretty bad at it. It certainly doesn’t bring us joy. Sometimes when I listen to Garry or Rob, droning on during The Today Programme sports news about some ghastly score draw in the Scottish League (the only news line being that someone chucked a coin at the goalie), I wonder whether the sporting powers that be properly understand the truth: that the game really binding us together as a nation is not football but rugby union.
Every corner of the UK is good at it. The Scots are unlikely to win the World Cup but they have a fantastic team who will last the course with the world’s best – and they are the weakest of the Home Nations. The Irish (including several players from Northern Ireland) could win, as might either Wales or England. Indeed Ireland, England and Wales are all in the top five world rankings.
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