Humor: Rugby reaches for the stars

Rugby reaches for the stars

I work in the sports department of an Australian newspaper, and the other day one of our rugby reporters, Alwyn Nix, came bounding in excited by the news that scientists believed life might exist on 30 other stars in the universe.

"Go and tell someone who cares, like the science writer," I almost told him. "We’ve got a sports section to get out here. Swimming, rugby league, the lawn bowls column. Important stuff."

"This IS important," Alwyn said, or words that that effect. "Don’t you realise that if there are 30 others planets with life forms, there is a chance they play rugby too!"

Hmmm. There is merit in this line of thought.

Rugby on earth, I believe, was invented at an early stage of our evolution so there is no reason why Neanderthal men elsewhere haven’t also stumbled into it.

Before I go on, I must admit that I am not the most enthusiastic person about sport in my department even though, yes, it is a sports department and what we write about is usually sport. In my younger days, I was quite fond of Australia football, cycling, curling and broomball. But I have other interests now. Sport seems such a waste of a dwindling reserve of testosterone. I’m in sport now for the large wads of money I can earn from it.

One of my colleagues, John Lilley, who is more at ease with the world of liniment and strained hammies than I, seized quickly upon Alwyn’s obvious excitement though. He could see the marketing potential of an inter-planetary rugby contest.

"Instead of labelling it ‘the game they play in heaven’, they could call it ‘the game played in the heavens’," he mused, as Alwyn stood there with glazed eyes, pondering the marvels of the rugby universe and no doubt trying to figure out how he could persuade his wife to let him make the 52-year rocket trip to Outer Zebrfon V to cover a Super 42 match.

John also threw in a few two-headed-beings-playing tight-head-prop type jokes.

Someone else pointed out that the home team on Outer Zebrfon V would have a decided advantage playing in near-zero gravity against a fairly veteran visiting line-up.

Well, better to invite them here, I thought.

Let’s ask them to participate in the World Cup, which we should hastily rename the Galaxy Cup.

Anyone who is anyone in the rugby world will be there - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, England, Scotland, Spain, Uruguay, Argentina, Italy, Tonga, France, Fiji, Japan, Romania, Samoa and Wales.

It’s rugby! What’s it going to matter if a few more funny-looking people turn up?

Of course, this assumes that the 30 other planets aren’t inhabited by superior beings who have long since grown out of rugby in much the same way that we no longer go down to the village square and toss rotten fruit and vegetables at the petty criminals locked in stocks.

I don’t really understand rugby union very well.

All I know is that it’s a simple game played between two teams of 15 on-ground players who try to get a ball to their respective ends of a playing field about 100 metres long. I’m pretty sure they have some rules.

I am fairly sure, too, that our fellas could teach those outer-space fellas a thing or two about the game.

Some years ago, a couple of Russian chess grand masters proposed that their game could be used to communicate with space aliens.

"If we were in the place of those sending color signals into the distant cosmos, we would consider anchoring ourselves on the vast wastes of the ocean both to the theorem of Pythagaros, and to the elementary ‘scholars’ mate’," D. Bronstein and G. Smolyan wrote.
"We think that the concepts of forward, backward, up, down, left, right, together, separately, from corner to corner, attack, defence, late, early, reality, illusion, boldness, cowardice, quickly, slowly, risk, calculation, generously, sparingly, elementary, vulgar, beautiful, ugly, stupid, clever and certain others can be perfectly well conveyed using chess symbols.

I guess that’s the line of thinking Alwyn had too.

Rugby quite obviously has some of those same traits: backward, slowly, and ugly. The big difference from chess is that losing teams don’t put themselves out of their misery by knocking their captain over in resignation before the completion of scheduled play.

Though, I guess they might on Outer Zebrfon V. They might only be a little bit more advanced than us.

Rugby-heads want more? Click on these links

A cry for help from a rugby missionary
CAPTAIN'S LOG, 22nd of June, 1852: It is now 622 cursed days since we set sail from Portsmouth, England, aboard The Lady Tighthead Prop.
Our mission was to spread the word of rugby union to the uncivilised world.

No son of mine is going to play with Hookers
My son Jack, 5, came home from school the other week with new, important news.
"Do you know which team I go for, daddy?" he asked.
This is the moment every father dreads.
It is the moment that his son announces allegiance to a team which isn't necessarily the team his father has spent his whole life supporting.

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it