Middle-class fans like me loathe cult of celebrity – but rugby needs it

There is a continuing battle for the soul of rugby union. There’s the conservative, middle-aged, middle-class core of followers who regard the scrum as something sacred. Who froth at the thought of non-stop attacking action, distrusting anything with even an echo of rugby league. In the main the same audience loathe the cult of personality. It’s a team game. That is what makes it such a wonderful sport. This is the rugby union with which I have been in love all my life. Am I wrong?
Lined up against them are the 15 to 30 age bracket. They have grown up online. They are nourished by celebrity. Like magpies they are attracted to the glitter of the game. Try to feed them a feature on the technical vagaries of a loose-head prop forward. The market is, to put it mildly, limited. Argue the case for a low-scoring game (the World Cup semi-finals and final involving South Africa are an exception because of the magnitude of the event and the intensity of the downpour) over a try-fest and you’ll find yourself on the wrong end of the debate.
So it was, 26 days after New Year’s Day when Bristol beat Bath 57-44 at Ashton Gate. In excess of 100 points as defence capitulated. I really did not enjoy the game. At full-time I looked down a few rows to my old mate, Gareth Chilcott. Our eyes rolled in agreement — yet the press box was full of excitement, the fans thought the game bordered on greatness when it was little more than glorified sevens. There we go again!
The set piece was nothing more than a mode to restart in Bristol. Awful. My friends who watch three-hour films with subtitles and rugby games without constantly glancing at their devices tend to share this view. Last Saturday morning, when the former Australian centre Tim Horan talked about Eben Etzebeth’s plan to watch fellow South African Dricus du Plessis’s UFC world title defence in Perth the next day, I may have groaned aloud. Any UFC fans reading this column?
But cage fighting is massive on TikTok. Members of my family are passionate about the sport. And so, on Sunday morning, I found clips of not only the fearsome lock forward but also the inspiring Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi, walking their fellow South African into the arena. The stone-faced minder roles were replaced with wild jubilation as their countryman prevailed against Israel Adesanya. It all seems a little too WWE for my tastes. But who cares about another conservative sneer?
Certainly not two of the most influential players on the planet. These two guys are “influencers” in their own right. I suspect a lot more people viewed the fight than tuned in globally for the comfortable Springbok win in Perth. Look at it this way: how many fight fans saw the frenzies of Etzebeth and thought, ‘Hey, I wouldn’t mind seeing this huge hulk doing whatever it is he does.’
Here is the cult of personality — one of the rugby establishment’s great no-nos — potentially attracting new viewers online. Possible converts to a game previously unknown to them. If rugby wants to use the politicians’ favourite phrase and “grow” the game it has to leave some of what makes it great behind. A friend of mine with extensive broadcast experience of rugby in USA believes the sport is failing to grow in the US owing to the very existence of its essential old-world integrity.
While bling and bash prevails in the US of A, rugby plays up to the team ethos. The people who matter in American rugby have argued that there is something special in standing up to the crass. “And you know what, nobody cares about the team,” my friend said. All the market research, on both sides of the Atlantic, points to the personal, to the superstar as the seller of the sporting product. USA Rugby will have to leave its old world ways behind if it is to “grow”.
On this side of the ocean, French sport is driven by the individual, not the collective. Antoine Dupont is bigger than French rugby; Victor Wembanyama, the basketball sensation and No1 pick in the 2023 NBA draft, is basketball’s inspiration, while Kylian Mbappé is French football. These are all team sports driven by the one-off star. Television coverage is fixated by sequences of replays featuring the famous and fêted. Former players turned analysts might want to talk about the subtle details in the tight but the replay director knows what celebrity shots pay his salary. In many ways, David Flatman, a former prop forward, is the last bastion of refuge for those who prefer the less obvious.
Rugby has to find a balance between the future and the past. At the moment the debate revolves around one side or the other. The conservatives will make their final stand at the scrum while the radical growth crew will seek to speed up and simplify the game purely off the back of market research.
Watching the Springboks, on the field and near the cage, made me wonder if they are not ahead of the rest of the world in the way they market and manage the sport as well. Yes, winning helps, but with Etzebeth awesome in the set piece and cartoon crazy ringside one day later, here’s an instance where the old guard are satisfied on the field and potential newcomers thrilled by rugby “celebrities” off it.
As for the scrum; it is not sacred but it is special. There’s a middle ground where modest growth is possible. Avoid the extremes.