In some ways, watching rugby on television is more enjoyable than the live experience. At half-time these days, for example, you discover that, without warning and not so much as a how’s your father, beg your pardon or thank you very much, the code’s money-grubbers have sold off the rights to your ears. At the ground, we have no protection from the inanities of the evil contemporary pollution that we too politely call advertising being poured into our earholes, from where it makes its way to offend whatever grey matter and aesthetic sensibility we might still possess. With television, at least you can mute the flood of this modern junk.
On the other hand, some aspects of the game itself don’t translate onto the small screen, such as the rolling maul. Nothing in rugby can attract, mesmerise and thrill a crowd like a rolling maul. Perhaps it’s the surprise of its appearance that grabs stadiums. Many plays have the potential to become rolling mauls, but usually you’re lucky to see a single good maul per match. At the ground, you can feel the crowd focusing when one of these rolling monsters begins to take shape and go forward. If the pack make a few metres, the applause will also begin to roll, and it will rise, metre by metre. If the maul rolls long enough, it cannot but provoke the whole house into a mighty roar, the like of which can never be conveyed by television.
I’ve not been alone in favouring the rolling maul as one of the weapons that the Wallabies should have developed to defeat the All Blacks. It’s obvious that France and South Africa have put enormous work into perfecting the extraordinary feat of teamwork, strength, discipline and skill that is required to get one of these things off the ground, and then keep it that way. The logic appeals, because a good maul will draw all the opposition’s forwards in, creating space for line breaks when the ball is finally let out. Thus, this weekend we’ll see two teams that are among the best exponents ever of one of rugby’s unique features, having practised it to a very high degree as an integral part of the thinking they’ve put in over the last four years to defeat a standard that’s already flown home to New Zealand.
How will the RWC semi-finals go? Everyone in the world bar their own supporters would love to see the Springboks go down to the Argies, as unlikely as that prospect seems. No doubt each and every tragically hollowed-out Wallaby fan will be barracking for France over England. Whatever the results, I expect to see more of those great rolling mauls, even though it’s a real pity that this will only be on television.
Update: Another bleak result, with the Poms winning 14-9 in a close contest that could have easily gone the other way. The tragedy of it was that the French completely forgot they were French, and tried to beat the English at their own game. With this crazy thought in their heads, they blighted their attacking skills, surrendering their superb rolling maul and clever running backs to the field-goal option, which kept returning rested Pommie forwards to the mid-field. What a sad state of affairs we’ve come to, given that we look like being reduced to supporting the Springboks to deny England an unthinkable sequence of Cups. Can the Argies save the world at the 11th hour with a miracle finish? I wouldn’t put my house on it. Woe.
Update: South Africa won 37-13. I didn’t see the game, but the reports suggest I didn’t miss much. Going into the final, I guess we’re all Springboks now.