So listen, I was at a rugby game recently and a team won, as often tends to happen at sporting contests. No biggie, right? I mean, that’s the idea, to win.
Pretty sure that’s what the coaches would have pencilled in as a good result.
I’ve never heard a coach give a fire and brimstone half-time address about “just go out there and draw, you bastards!” Not unless said coach wanted the ACCC to turn up at his house with warrants to investigate match-fixing. But what do I know? I’ve never coached a pro sports team.
Anyway, I digress. A team won and a team lost. But afterwards, as I walked out of the stadium for some refreshing post-game cleansing ales, I started to hear this phrase being bandied around by my fellow stadium ticket holders. My little pixie ears straightened up to take notice of what was being said, and the context it was being applied to.
The Wallabies
The phrase was “winning ugly”.
The context was the Wallabies game. Which they won.
But you knew that already didn’t you, clever dicks.
It appeared that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth (for my Queensland readers, I’ll apply the singular) and rather than enjoy a Wallaby win, it occurred to me that there was a high percentage of depression and unhappiness in the way that the Wallabies won.
So the Wallabies won, but won ugly. I assume that means that they didn’t live up to a higher expectation to not only win, but do so in a way where the sporting contest could cross-over into high art.
Stop the game. We are boring people!
Rugby’s Next Top Model, perhaps. Look good while getting smashed at the breakdown, or Jennifer Hawkins will freeze-frame the moment of contact and point out your lack of grace and grimace as your brain is rattled for the 42nd time, while the rest of the neo-nazi fashionista judging panel all tut-tut in disapproval.
No, my thought of a Rugby game as a reality high-art TV show came and went quickly. I suspect it would be closer to Beauty and the Geeks anyway. Am I right, girls? Boom!
Winning ugly. Odd.
There was this bloke, an Aussie bloke, who once entered the Hawaiian Iron Man; in 1997. His name was Chris Legh. His race was defined as much for what happened afterwards as the contest itself. Let’s hear from Chris:
“Basically, I had become so dehydrated because of all the vomiting and diarrhoea throughout the day, that my body’s internal mechanisms decided that they needed to deliver the oxygen and nutrients that were left in my body, to the vital organs, these being the heart, brain, kidneys and liver etc. Also the fact that I was still moving meant my muscles took a large chunk of those nutrients too.
“So, my intestines, which apparently are not vital (!) were starved of oxygen and infarcted, much like heart muscle does in a heart attack situation. Subsequently a portion of intestine starved became gangrenous and actually died!
Ok. Game plan or solo flash? Game plan or solo flash? Damn, I just don’t know anymore!
“Sixteen centimetres (roughly 1/3) of my large intestine and my appendix were removed. There was a much larger part (almost ¾) of my intestine that was on the verge of dying, but thankfully the damage was not completely through the whole wall of that portion, so it was able to regenerate itself again and left in me. If not, I would have had to have a permanent colostomy bag.” ***
Damn! That’s pretty ugly. How dare you subject us to that. Why couldn’t you just compete and spare us the manner in which you competed? And you didn’t even win! Seriously, stop wasting my time.
Chris is clearly a loser. Just like Pat Rafter, who choked so badly at Wimbledon against Goran that you could just about see his face turning blue. Not like Kieran Perkins though, who came from finishing 8th in qualifying to push past the pain barrier and win the 1,500m swim at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics the very next day. A bloody Aussie hero.
So when did we start giving a red rat’s rectum about style over wins?
This is traditionally the point in the argument where we hear from the aesthetically challenged. What is the point, they cry, of winning when it looked so awful? How can we get people to come to our great game and be financial members when that kind of drivel is served up?
Good point. And of course, to a certain extent, they are dead right. We have multiple footy codes in Australia, in which rugby sits about 21st in the pecking order. Well, you know, there or there abouts. But clearly, to get good crowds and potentially add some new ones, we need excitement, dammit! Izzy dancing and sidestepping his way to a brace of tries every match. The front row hitting attacking players so hard the spectators in the top row of the stands pops a shoulder in sympathy; the ball moving from player to player at warp speed, cap’n!
Play some rugby, or we shall taunt you a second time!
Oh, and NO BOX KICKS.
You can tell there is a “but” about to be unleashed, right?
But, the counter-argument is that being as flash as a rat with a gold tooth is wonderful, but not particularly satisfying if the team get done like a dinner. Something about substance over style. I blame the 1991 Wallabies for setting the bar so high. Flash? Far out, brussel sprout, if they were any cooler they would have given hypothermia to the front 15 rows of every stadium they played in.
Hang on. A thought just popped into the front of my mind, where my pre-frontal lobe once hid. If a team can win ugly, can’t they also lose beautifully?
Awesome. That’s why Pat Rafter is still revered across this great country of ours. And why the digestively-challenged Chris Legh is held up as an example of the never-give-up-never-surrender Disney mantra we Australians are famous for.
Because the truth, dear reader, is that we only care about the style (i.e. the manner in which we won) when the game is unfolding before our very eyes. It’s having our cake and eating it too. It’s not just saying we won, but how much better we looked than the other team while we ground them into dust. It’s ego. EGO, I tells ya.
Because in 20 years time, people are only going to throw the win in our face. Ha! Take that England! You played such dour, reserved, boring UGLY rugby in 2003. Well, yes, you won the Webb Ellis Cup, sure, but what a team of UGLINESS!
No, no. What we know is only that England won the 2003 RWC. That is it. Story. End. Of.
I bet Clive, sorry, Sir Clive, doesn’t give a toss about how he became a RWC winning coach.
Neither will Link in 2015. And neither should you.
I wish I was the Socceroos mascot.
Wins matter, my good and dear friends. Style matters if you are vain enough to want it to matter, but I’ll take my Wallabies being RWC champions, and be damned the manner in which they become so.
Or will I? Actually, get Tyra Banks on the phone. Let’s pretty those boys UP!
Not a single bit of factual information has ever been blogged by me, of which I am extremely proud.
Opinion pieces. Don't hate. Read. Think. Then comment.
