The most embarrassing thing in a game of rugby is to be tackled by your opposite number and to stay down, either winded or genuinely injured. In a game that hinges on personal battles against your opposite number, just like football, showing a sign of weakness is as good as saying you've lost that personal battle. So, how come footballers don't seem to grasp the fundamental human emotion of embarrassment? I know the size of the knot on their ties shows they have a laisez faire attitude to self awareness, and, personally, if I found myself married to a woman who couldn't spell her favourite wine (despite it also being her name), I'd be mortified and keep her locked away in the attic, but there are limits.
Imagine that the footballer were in their favourite R&B bar listening to music that can only be likened to yodelling and sizing up the vacuous whore that will later be made air tight by half the team (all married). Then imagine that someone takes a dislike to one of their massive tie knots and pushes the footballer very gently in the chest. Do you think the professional sportsmen would fall to the floor, crying, holding their face and rolling on the floor more times than a dog in fox muck. No. They'd probably head butt them and put a cigar out in their face.
So why, on a football field, surrounded by thousands of people and watched by millions, do they feel happy to emasculate themselves by feigning injury? Now I know there are the likes of Terry Butcher or Paul Ince who get a gash on the head, get it wrapped up and then get back on the pitch but they are few and far between. The majority of footballers seem to have a pain threshold similar to a toddler falling off a slide - including the same vacant and confused look.
Anyone that has seen Living With The Lions would have witnessed Martin Johnston playing against South Africa, cutting his eyebrow open, having circa 15 stitches (without anaesthetic) then getting back on the pitch about 10 minutes later. Fellow player Scott Quinnell said the following: "People ask me what sort of leader Martin Johnson was – if he asked me to run through a wall now, I'd just go and do it. He'd have made it easy, really, there'd be a big hole where he'd already gone through."
How many footballers could say the same of their captain? The only hole he'd been through would have been that attached to his team mate's wife.
But, the inevitable seems to have happened. If someone had said to you that players had been at a World Cup, drinking, cheating on their wives, insulting hotel staff as though they could buy or sell them, losing petulantly then topping it off with being arrested for jumping off a ferry in their pants - you'd think football. But alas, as has come to light recently, money seems to have turned a game played by gentlemen into a game played by, what can only be described as 'cunts'.
I never thought I'd say it but I genuinely wish the rugby world cup hadn't happened. It's destroyed all my arguments for rugby vs football and all elements of pride seem to be equally absent for both games. It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing rugby players rushing up to referees and instead of calling them sir, brandishing imaginary yellow cards and calling them cheating twats.
What is great is when you see grass roots rugby where players will destroy each other for 80 mins, then walk off the pitch shaking hands and having a laugh. OK, so it won't have been played at the same pace or anywhere near the skill levels as internationals but the commitment, passion and pride is never in question.
It's a shame that with most sports there seems to be a graph that you can chart showing wage and ability going up as pride and respect drop at the same speed. Sort it out rugby players. Give me ammo to argue the football vs rugby debate in a pub without having to make up statistics and changes of subject.
