It occurs to me just how much like a game of rugby this forum is. I can see it gets pretty willing in here. Haven’t participated yet and I have to admit to feeling a little like a sub watching the clock and wondering if the coach is going to give him a run. Sometimes seeing the off the ball stuff that goes on I think I’d rather not play, other times I see something happen and I get fired up and want to come charging on. Online forums are like the bottom of a ruck. Some pretty underhanded and anonymous activity can take place and a wise man enters, hopefully through the gate, with his eyes wide open. The moderators of this forum are to be commended for policing the ruck so effectively.
I have been an admirer of the forum for some time particularly of its insistence that members refrain from descending into abuse and invective. If I may rather boldly say however, it is evident that standards have been slipping lately – in particular with regard to the professed hatred of players and by association of people from particular countries.
Without wanting to sound high and mighty I think this is a shame. Players and their actions are open to comment. I confess to forming strong feelings both positive and negative about certain players and am forthright in articulating them. However when those feelings become the sole currency of exchange, particularly when the feelings are negative, it makes for an unedifying spectacle. This seems to be happening within this forum to some degree.
For example this whole cheat thing is descending rapidly into farce. It really is beneath us.
The only thing that matters is that we beat the All Blacks last weekend and not just by five points. They got done well and truly, and any honest kiwi fan will admit this. They got done because we finally turned up and played with an intensity and desire that was the equal or greater of anything they could produce. If we continue to turn up like this then we can win, and win well most of the time we play them. And the beautiful thing is that they know it. To my mind this fact and this fact alone lays bare the whole issue of cheating as largely irrelevant. No matter what they did in the first half they couldn’t live with us. It is this and this alone that has been the defining difference between us and them in the last few years. We haven’t been able to live with them. To suggest that we have lost so many times to them because they cheat diminishes us more than them. It makes us look like whingers. If you play well enough there is simply no amount of cheating that can prevent you from winning. Yes I admit that when teams are evenly matched consistent bending of the rules can make a difference, but I ask you to reconsider the first half of last week’s game and recognise that at least for the first 40 mins there was only one team in it. They were cactus. The fact that they came back so well in the second half had bugger all to do with cheating and everything to do with changing their game plan and lifting their intensity – mind you it probably was also related to our well documented inability to sustain the required intensity after oranges.
So in a plea from a newbie can we surrender the obsession with cheating and get on with celebrating the emergence of a competitive Wallabies team?
Sermon over. Please feel free to tell me to bugger off for my impertinence. As we all know you have to earn the right to spin the ball wide by taking it up the middle first and it would be fair to say I haven’t done that yet.
Cheers everyone.
