In England, rugby is deeply symbolic of class divisions. I say England, because I don't mean Wales, and I don't think I mean Scotland. I don't think that I mean that golden but relatively sparsely populated area of Gloucester/Bath either.
I don't want to place too much emphasis on the effect of one's childhood: still, I think it can be quite crucial in forming interests, habits and prejudices.
I grew up in a strange place at a strange time. The Borough I grew up in is the only one that has a Premiership football club, a Premiership rugby club, and a Test cricket ground/County Championship 1 team. When I was a teenager, we had the best non-League football team in the land. We also had two decent standard athletics clubs, two half decent ice-hockey teams and Britain's second best ice dancers. Yet, our local radio had Rugby League as our second sport.
Traditionally, rugby was played at grammar schools, and football at secondary moderns. That was very much the case for the boys I grew up with. Indeed, the three state grammar schools that many of my male friends used to attend still promote rugby above football. I suspect that is unusual.
I haven't really done any research for the area in which I now live, but would happily place a bet that rugby is the preserve of the independent school sector. I see my cousins' old school still has rugby fields, but I expect it's a rare thing in the state sector.
Rugby can be a problem. Many of my contemporaries were pissed off at compulsory rugby - they were musical instrumentalists and refused to risk their hands in what to them was a display of macho brutality. My brother was not fond of rugby. By his time, they were more liberal, and he chose cross country rather than rugby.
The rugger buggers at University were notorious and deeply unpopular. Most of them were public-school educated louts, with a supreme belief in their superiority, which included displays of public nudity in the Buttery, physical harassment of disabled students, and trashing of the Portland building. If there was one event worse than an inter-University rugby match, when we entertained the thugs of Loughborough, Leicester and Sheffield was the Inter-Universities Mining Engineers Rugby Match. Run and hide.
Rugby gets very little coverage on TV compared to so many other sports, and, especially, football. Most people have busy and/or fulfilled lives, and lack the time or inclination to follow closely every sport on the box. It's easier to follow football, because of the blanket coverage. How often do you walk into a pub and actually see a rugby match on? You generally do in my local, because there's a critical mass, and the middle classes flock from all over South-West Brixton Hill to congregate, mightily pissing off the Chelsea-borderline BNP contingent. But I can't remember ever walking into another pub and seeing rugby.
As I have said before, I am not a great rugby fan, but I grew up with it. My father, educated at minor public schools, much preferred it to football, which he tolerated for the sake of us three. Most Saturday trips out in the winter would involve passing the playing fields of the then Sale Grammar School for Boys (now a hideous modern estate of aspirational homes for Classic FM people - they even renamed the Cock Robin to the Manor House...I feel rant).
I'm a girl, I don't have to understand the offside rule, and I get confused about when a penalty is awarded and when it's a scrum, and I still think it's four points for a try, and this World Cup has seen me show more interest in rugby than I have for years - although I did watch bits of the 99 World Cup. I'm not pretending otherwise. You probably won't see many more blog entries from me about rugby. Maybe I'm cynical - who's interested nowadays in ice-skating, be it of the Curry-Cousins or the Torvill and Dean variety. Does anybody even give a shit that Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell would rather race in a four at the Olympics in Athens?
I would imagine that once the Victory Parade and Public Holiday, Sports Review of the Year (well, three of those awards are shoo-ins!) and New Years Honours are out of the way, Jonny Wilkinson will continue to be an instantly recognisable celebrity, much like Steve Redgrave or Paula Ratcliffe. But there won't be a significant increase in people watching rugby, live or on telly.
