by Mike Martin @thefootietweet
When Bebeto scored for Brazil against Holland in the 1994 World Cup quarter final, he and a couple of his mates celebrated by pretending to rock his new baby in their arms. If the Dutch found the celebration 'disrespectful' they certainly kept it to themselves and perhaps retorted in the best way: fighting back from two goals down to 2-2 in the space of fourteen minutes.
When Chris Ashton scores a try for England, which he seems to do about every fourteen minutes at the moment, he celebrates in a less extravagant way. He does a jump. Occasionally he raises a finger, though not as much as, say, Ian Rush.
The first time he did this a fortnight ago at Twickenham, an Italian opponent was so overcome with rage that he looked for a moment like he might give Ashton a smack. Rugby players give each other a smack quite a lot but extensive research at the university of Hull Kingston Rovers has concluded that that is absolutely fine.
Commentator Brian Moore – the rugby one, that is – usually greets the sight of a rugby player rolling around on the floor with words to the effect of "Get up, footballer." Moore is usually a very good co-commentator – "You can't have people who are just there for running about otherwise you just look like Australia" – but here he has fallen for rugby's oldest lie. When a football player cheats, it is football's fault. When a rugby player cheats, it is football's fault.
I watch both sports and see just as much cheating and far more thuggery in the oval-ball game, be it union or league. The reaction to Ashton's celebration is an example of rugby union's biggest blandishment: piety. If FC Barcelona were a sport, they would be rugby union.
What lies behind dislike of the 'Ash Splash' is a cocktail of old rugby union prejudices. There is, of course, an anti-football element but also an anti-rugby league feeling that clearly still runs deep among the buttoned-up followers of English rugby. Ashton is northern and used to play league for Wigan, which is enough to give the Queen's Counsels and hedge fund managers who fill Twickenham palpitations.
Union may have gone professional but it still holds dear the sporting sacred cow of the Corinthian ethos. Maybe this is why the game is so useless at dealing with thuggery. When Schalk Burger gouged the eye of Luke Fitzgerald in the second Test of the 2009 Lions tour of South Africa, his punishment was a ten-minute sin-binning. He went on to have a decisive part in a largely undeserved match and series win for a pretty dismal Springbok side. In the previous Lions tour four years earlier, a couple of witless neanderthals from New Zealand spear-tackled Brian O'Driscoll, who dislocated his shoulder in trying to protect his head, ending his tour two minutes into the first Test. The All Blacks, of course, are allowed to cheat and Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu escaped without censure.
Rugby still holds the notion that everybody on the pitch is a sound chap and that no gentleman would cheat or assault an opponent on a rugby pitch. That idea was dated fifty years ago. The game became professional in 1995 but the naïve amateur ethos still renders its disciplinary procedures ineffectual. There are still those who think that Ashton, as a former league player, should not be allowed to type 'Twickenham' into google.
Rugby is not even the worst. At least it is a reasonably entertaining way of passing eighty minutes. Don't get me started on golf. That it is an abundantly ridiculous game of which the sole redeeming feature is that it keeps City of London dullards away from our money for a few hours is axiomatic and need not detain us here. The rules of golf are mostly bewilderingly pointless yet are worshipped by club players, who probably keep the Decisions on the Rules of Golf 2011 book on the bedside table next to the Financial Times and a portrait of Norman Lamont. At least footballers don't claim to be morally righteous, which is probably just as well. Give me that over the pious tedium of the golf or rugby clubhouse any day.
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