5 Ways To Supress Your Rugby Cynicism

11th Sep 2023

Marketing departments in every business all over Ireland have been busy trying to jump on the Rugby World Cup bandwagon, producing some of the most cringing adverts and social media posts ever made. Add in some stupid self-obsessed tweets from former rugby players and commentators desperately trying to maximise the hype to turn some coin, it’s turning as many people off watching rugby as it is turning people on.

However, help is at hand. Try taking these simple steps to prevent these langballs making rugby unwatchable.


1. Tell yourself that those awful ads declaring ‘this is rugby country’ just refers to the four places on the island where rugby is actually played. Take ‘THIS’ to mean just Cork City, Dublin, Belfast and the bits of Limerick City that aren’t wasteland - not the rest of the country - where a rugby ball might be mistaken for a football that has been mangled into an oval shape having been run over by a combine harvester.
div style="text-align: center;">Watch this old pile of snot at your own risk:

2. Tell yourself former Ireland rugby player Jamie Heaslip is probably unhinged. His profoundly weird tweets comparing Ireland’s rugby success and the tech sector could easily be interpreted as a cry for help so run with that in your own mind. Don’t let him turn you off enjoying an Ireland match.

3. Don’t turn on the TV to watch a game until the match is underway and turn it off at half time. That way you’ll avoid all the embarrassing adverts as brands desperately try to jump on the rugby bandwagon: a melancholy piano backing track with some emotional footage of a young fella playing rugby in his run-down looking local club who turns into someone now playing for Ireland. Press the off button.

 4. Don’t throw your eyes up when rugby commentators cream themselves over a forward whose main job is pushing and shoving, suddenly kicking the ball successfully out over the sideline. This job is usually confined to backs so seeing somebody step outside of their designated role as a meat head, causes no end of bemusement. This happens because they have never watched or played any other sport. Leave them alone.

5. Avoid ‘rogbish’ – the special language rugby commentators have created to make the game sound overly complicated. As well as rebranding things like ‘running’ as a ‘foot race’ and other nonsense, proponents of rogbish frequently compare rugby matches to famous military battles. You can find our guide to Rogbish here and the Rogby Football Skills Translator forum thread