Who likes Rugby?
May 29, 2010 3:23 PM   Subscribe

What are the cultural milieux for the various national rugby fraternities?

I understand that Australian Rugby is basically private school boys, New Zealand rugby is classless, Saffie is afrikaner descended, and English is CofE Public Schools (we know where William Webb Ellis went to school), but I have no handle on the sociological background of the other primary rugby playing nations, such as France, Italy and Argentina. Also, why on earth are Japan, Georgia and Rumania so into the game?

Anything about the third tier nations such as the USA and Canada also welcome... (I was very surprised to see a pic of Bush the lesser playing rugby at Uni, and guess it's a class thing there as well)
posted by wilful to Society & Culture (17 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
my sister plays Canadian rugby at the national level, and its pretty working class, from what i can tell.
posted by PinkMoose at 4:07 PM on May 29, 2010


(Throat clearing). Canada is a Tier Two rugby nation, has played at every World Cup and reached the quarters in 1991. (Love rugby, was at the last final in Paris, plan on being in NZ next year.) In terms of men's rugby in Canada, it's a pretty mixed bag - some working class, but a lot of private school boys (who have gone on to play at Oxbridge) and a ton of sons (and daughters, like me!) of British immigrants.
posted by meerkatty at 4:37 PM on May 29, 2010 [1 favorite]


Rugby is not so much a "class" thing in the U.S. as it is generally experienced in the university and private school settings, because that's where there's enough leisure time for people to experiment with non-mainstream sports, and there's no strong support system for recreational tackle football (American football) after high school.

My anecdotal experience on a club team was that everyone had an experience similar to: "I played football in high school, but was never even close to being good enough to play in college, but hey, this rugby thing looks interesting..."
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:39 PM on May 29, 2010


Ireland (South): upper middle class, tend to send kids to boarding school, particularly ones like Blackrock College, but this is changing a bit with the recent success of Irish teams.

Ireland (North): Predominantly, but not exclusively Protestant, mostly middle class but widening, again with recent success of Irish teams.

That's the players, recently the viewers/supporters have been drawn from a wider background.

A variant of rugby was developed in Georgia, Lelo Burti, hence rugby union's popularity there today.
posted by knapah at 5:57 PM on May 29, 2010


New Zealand isn't actually classless on rugby; it's far more a cross-class sport than the UK or Australia, for sure, but there are regions where rugby league outstrips rugby union, and those are traditionally left-wing, broke areas - the coal mining towns of the West Coast, Wainuiomata, and so on.
posted by rodgerd at 6:47 PM on May 29, 2010 [1 favorite]


I was a rugby player in Canada for a long time... not sure how pertinent this is...

I know that in France, rugby is highly identified with the south - Perpignan, Brive, Marseilles, etc. I'm pretty sure (but far from 100%) that a significant proportion of French team players are from the south of France, and my impression is that it's mostly a working class kind of thing. Would have no problem being proven wrong on that one...

My real experience is in Canada, and I played (in my time) in Ottawa, Montreal, and Alberta. Each was kind of different. In Ottawa the game was relatively mainstream - it was a high school sport (at the end of my time in HS) - and people came from all backgrounds. In Montreal I played at McGill and a good portion of the most skilled players were from BC, and mostly from private-school environments. People from Ontario or Quebec on the team were from all over. Americans were from New England private schools.

Club rugby in Montreal was a very mixed bag - French immigrants' kids, Anglo private school kids, other athletic types who just caught on with the game along the way. I played for one season in Alberta, and it was a very mixed bag as well - some BC kids (but no recollection of them having been from any specific milieu), some local Alberta kids who were mostly just really good athletes (I played with one World Cup skier), and a few huge Saskatchewan farm boys.
posted by mikel at 6:52 PM on May 29, 2010 [1 favorite]


I understand that Australian Rugby is basically private school boys

Union, maybe, but League is a working man's sport.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 6:55 PM on May 29, 2010


Yes, Rugby is a thug's game played by gentlemen, whereas League is a gentleman's game played by thugs.

Which is a reasonably good description of the difference, as long as you ignore the fact that League is not a gentleman's game in any sense of anything.
posted by UbuRoivas at 7:44 PM on May 29, 2010 [2 favorites]


In the US, people often play rugby in college because they were high school athletes but aren't good enough (or don't want to) play their sport at the collegiate level. Very few high schools offer rugby but there's a decent club system in some places. Lots of my high school friends joined a rugby club that played in the spring/summer, the offseason in Southern California for football and soccer. Of course, playing in a club requires some money for registration and gear, but not too much.
posted by acidic at 9:31 PM on May 29, 2010


mikel,

who did oyu play for in alta
posted by PinkMoose at 11:06 PM on May 29, 2010


and English is CofE Public Schools

Not really. Catholic public schools like Downside and Ampleforth are very pro-rugby. Lawrence Dallaglio, for example, went to Ampleforth. There just aren't that many Catholic public schools, relatively speaking.

Increasingly, English rugby is democratising, though, as professionalism pulls in people who don't fit the old mould. That said, a quick glance at the Daily Mail's ranking of the top 100 schools doesn't show many inner city comps.
posted by MuffinMan at 12:15 AM on May 30, 2010


Once you get west of the Severn, Rugby Union is more working class than the rest of England. Rugby League, as in Australia, is working class, and geographically restricted to the M62 corridor by any realistic measure.

(Also, I played in the front row for long enough to know that anyone claiming Union as a gentleman's game is at best disingenuous.)
posted by Bodd at 12:49 AM on May 30, 2010


Best answer: I think that a front rower using a word like 'disingenuous' puts the lie to your claim.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:25 AM on May 30, 2010


I know the Welsh were always known for their working class attitude to the game, being miner's sons and all that.

Having played both league and union UbuRoivas, union is anything but a gentleman's game. Get to the bottom of a ruck and you'll see. Also the players were far less accepting of those who didn't meet the private school, upper-middle class stereotype whereas the league boys were happy to mix with anyone.
posted by micklaw at 2:01 AM on May 30, 2010


You're a Victorian, aren't you, wilful. Refer please either to "union" or "league" and we'll take the rest as read.

I'm led to believe that rugby union in South America's associated with Anglophilia more than class; although that is itself a middle and upper class thing. A colleague of mine who's played a bit of social sport in Japan tells me that rugby union there's associated with homosocial alcoholic bonding rather than class.

Also in Australia (at least in NSW and QLD) there's a significant women's rugby union competition which doesn't share the elitism of the men's sport; if you're a woman of any class in Australia and you want to play contact sport, it's likely to be union or Australian rules—league doesn't have much of a presence at all.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:16 PM on May 30, 2010 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Fiasco, of course I'm talking about Union, not mungo ball. I'm quite aware of where RL and RU fit in the Australian and New Zealand contexts, less so of other countries.
posted by wilful at 9:08 PM on May 30, 2010


Sorry Wil - didn't realise you were one of us. (Well, a turtle-neck-and-beret-wearing Mexican, but near enough. ;>)
posted by obiwanwasabi at 5:34 AM on June 3, 2010


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