Rugby For Shams 2

13th Nov 2003

Rugby for Shams 2

Last week we gave you full instructions on how to play rugby. Presumbaly you've been practising out your back garden all week with your kid nephew acting as scrum half and a plastic gnome in a wheel barrow as the driving forwards. Despite efforts to get your entire family (including wheelchair bound Grand-Uncle Seamo) out the back to simulate a line-out you're finding it hard to come up with thirty players to practice with and the back garden has its limitations: when you kick for touch junior is forced to call up to the O'Connell's five houses away every time to retrieve the ball leading to a staggering 40 minute period of injury time.

To get to grips with the game you might want to ball along to a real game out in Musgrave Park first to suss out the scene before you commit yourself to being Ireland's new superstar. Rugby despite being a professional game manages to keep the majority of its players in Irish clubs so any Celtic supporting shams out there will have little excuse in the way of patriotism in not supporting the "guys in green".

Style: Tracksuits and shellsuits are only acceptable on players themselves or on the ball boys. If you turn up to a match as a spectator in your cleanest shiniest tracka it will be assumed immediately that you are a pick pocket or perhaps somebody who wishes to sell chocolate bars and cans of fizzy cola from a stall to young rugby fans. You'll need to fork out a fair bit of grade for a rugby shirt with a high end brand name on it, preferably something like Canterbury or Dubarry.

At GAA or soccer matches the crowd will cheer anyone who manages to hop the wall and get in without paying. A rugby crowd full of solicitors, bankers and managing directors (and their off-spring) isn't as anti-establishment as its round ball counterparts. The terrifying sight of hoodied scobes hopping the stadium wall will have 200 top of the range mobiles dialling 112 and using advanced on-board imaging technology to e-mail photos of the intruders to Gardai. You simply must buy a ticket.

Unlike soccer gat is permitted in rugby stadiums. Daycent! Rugby fans are not likely to cause a riot and visiting supporters don't have to be shepherded from the train station to the venue by lines of riot police in case a knife accidentally slips into a passer-by's neck so a few gats are unlikely to heat things up - violence wise anyway. Despite being the most physically intense and aggressive of the county's top three sports, violence and rugby don't go hand in hand. Even in Limerick, a rugby strong hold, an immaculate record of supporters' behaviour has been established.

So anyway, one pint of Heiners later and you're standing on the terraces mingling with both sets of supporters looking pretty uncomfortable in your lemon colour pullover neatly hanging over the shoulders of your Canterbury rugby top. Spit out the bubble gum and you're ready to start mouthing off.

Crowd participation at Muzzers is not as united as say a match at Turner's Cross. Chanting is now to be considered a ruffian activity associated only with those working class English men who tried to break Landsdowne Road into little pieces in February 1995. ON that note, there is one piece of music that both Irish rugby fans and fans of Scottish soccer club Glasgow Celtic reluctantly share. To be considered a real fan of either team you simply must learn the unofficial Oirish national anthem: The Fields Of Athenry. Beyond the opening line you don't have to know the words, just the tune. The melody is all you need: "Lowwwww Lie the Fields of Athenry'