Al's Blog from the Bog

As rugby fans will be well aware, a bit of a scandal is dogging the world of rugby – specifically English club Harlequins, their winger Tom Williams and (now former) Director of Rugby, Dean Richards.

Briefly, during a very important game last season, there was a deliberate, illegal substitution following use of a blood capsule and a scalpel. Cheating, plain and simple, and premeditated at that.

Investigations have been conducted, reports written and punishments handed down. Harsh punishments, some say draconian. 4 months ban for Williams, 3 years for Richards, and £250k fine for the club.

Much has been written about this, rational and otherwise. Will Carling, a Quins man to the core, has been paticularly vocal in his criticism of the punishments and of all the fuss. Carling, a former England Captain, appears to be arguing that cheating has always happened and will always happen, so we shouldn’t make such a fuss.

Sorry Will, but you couldn’t be more wrong. If cheating has always been part of the game (I’m not disputing this) but has been ignored, where has this led? Clearly, the cheating has got worse, has escalated, become increasingly premeditated and employs highly sophisticated techniques. That’s what happens when rule-breaking is ignored: we got away with this last time, so let’s go a bit further, push a bit harder. The logical conclusion: just forget the rules and have a free-for-all. Great idea.

I’m glad to see that rugby’s authorities claim to have a ‘zero tolerance’ policy where cheating is concerned, and these punishments tend to support that claim. The penalties are harsh, certainly, but I’m happy about that. A message is being sent, one of deterrence. It’s natural to want to win, but those who are prepared to cheat must realise the risk they are taking – in this case it’s career-threatening. What other sanction will make them think twice?

We have seen a number of punishments handed out to rugby players in recent months, many associated with the use of ‘recreational’ drugs or failure to comply with drug-testing regimes. Maybe this (along with cheating generally) is not a new phenomena, maybe it’s just that testing is more rigorous and reporting more comprehensive. Rugby is certainly a higher profile sport than 20 years ago. None of this is relevant. As a purist, I say that rugby must strive, at all times and with all possible resources, to be ‘clean’. Teach youngsters to play hard but fair; don’t teach them how to cheat. Insist that senior players set an example, and severely punish those who do not.

Will Carling says he would prefer to “play alongside guys that were willing to cross that line, who had the balls and the backbone to cross that line in the pursuit of success,” in short, people who are prepared to cheat to win. I say that it’s not war (Carling is a former serviceman), it’s sport. His attitude is immoral and represents all that is wrong in sport. He talks about “men who happen to fail every now and then, who happen to make mistakes,” and says that Richards “made a bad call” in this instance. It wasn’t a mistake or a bad call, it was deliberate, calculated cheating in the pursuit of victory. He knew it was wrong but he took the chance it would not be discovered.

It’s this attitude that made me stop playing – I loved the sport but hated the cheating and would have no part of it. I’m a Quins supporter and sad that they didn’t beat Leinster to reach the European Cup Final, but I’m more sad, much more, that they tried to win this way.

It transpires that the Rugby Football Union are investigating four other similar incidents in which Richards & Harlequins are implicated. If true, it makes the punishment seem very appropriate, perhaps even lenient. This kind of behaviour must be stamped out.

Perhaps the International Rugby Board should try to turn the poacher into a gamekeeper. Dean Richards was a great and successful player, shows similar abilities as a coach and commands great respect in the rugby community. He clearly knows the sort of tricks that are likely to be employed on the dark side. He’s unemployed. Why not put him in charge of a ‘clean-up’ squad whose aim would be to root out and punish all types of illegal behaviour and, at the same time, persuade clubs to stop teaching the dark arts.

But thenagain, perhaps he agrees with Carling and wouldn’t be interested.

rugby cheating, rugby, sport

I don’t claim to know very much about this and all my ‘knowledge’ has come from reading news stories and blogs, which of course may be biased or ‘spun’, but I am slightly troubled. I am (politically) a liberal fence sitter, which obviously affects my perspective. There you are, I’ve declared my leanings.

As I understand it, President Obama wants to make it possible for everyone to receive medical care regardless of their means. A noble ideal, but someone still has to pay for it. In other words, taxes. This has caused a bit of a ruckus in the US, with the loud voices at either end of the political spectrum grabbing the headlines: down with taxes/don’t kill my baby; you know the sort of thing. Naturally there are also the (somewhat more subtle) corporates, lobbyists, pressure groups and so on, feeding money and (mis)information to those doing the shouting.

Daring Fireball has a couple of amusing (kind of) anecdotes:

From an Investor’s Business Daily editorial ¹ arguing against the current U.S. health care reform proposals:

“The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.” One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care.”

“People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”

Stephen Hawking was born and has lived his entire life in the U.K.

and

Anti-health-care-reform activist, reportedly injured in a fight at a town hall meeting last week, is collecting donations to pay his medical bills because he was recently laid off and lost his health insurance. [more]

I read both of these with a sense of wonder and despair. The inaccuracy and hypocrisy shown is astonishing and made me wonder if many US citizens are taken in by this stuff. I suppose there must be quite a few, or it wouldn’t be worth publishing. And yes, I have seen Fox News.

Society, community, nation: surely these terms imply some kind of structure of care, of support for those who (hopefully temporarily) cannot support themselves? It would be easy to believe that those who have the resources are simply unwilling to share and that the flip side of ‘land of opportunity’ is ‘tough luck if you don’t succeed’. Systems such as those in Britain and Ireland may be far from perfect but they at least attempt to be humane.

I started to think about The American Ideal (or my understanding of it); how it has been corrupted and where, ultimately, it will take the USA. Immediately my mind conjured up images of anarchy; a sort of ‘Mad Max’ post-apocalyptic scenario where it’s every person for themselves and the only law comes from the barrel of a gun.

I can only hope I am very wrong, and as I said I am only seeing this through the eyes of the media.

1. since edited, removing refernces to Stephen Hawking ↑

miscellaneous, politics international, life, people, politics, USA