'If we don't stop the online idiocy, we're going to end up with broken players and a grossly diminished game'
As a callow player and a sensitive young man, Adam Hastings couldn’t help himself. After every game, he’d rush back to the changing rooms, fetch out his phone, plug his name into Twitter and scour social media for comments about his performance.
Usually, he’d search for “Hastings”. Often, he wouldn’t have to. Not when frothing ‘supporters’ and faceless malcontents were tagging him in spite, venom that laid waste to already frail confidence.
Hastings, mercifully, has grown out of that routine and blossomed into a Test-calibre fly-half, but he is far from alone. The temptation to peer into this virtual abyss can be overwhelming, intoxicating even. The thirst for acclaim and the innate need to slap down those who abuse gets the better of so many. Only dark things can come of it.
Stuart Hogg, the Scotland captain, was also a name-searcher once upon a time. In a BBC interview this week, he spoke of how a single negative comment amid 99 messages of praise would fester and gnaw at him above all the rest.
He even suggested players might grow so afraid of an online savaging that they would shy away from trying things and serving up the rugby that everybody wants to devour. That is a truly sobering thought. But it is easy to see why it might come to pass.
“I hope you die,” one individual tweeted Chris Ashton after the wing moved from Northampton Saints to Saracens in 2012. The hugely prolific England international became so sickened of Twitter and so upset by the barrage of abuse that he now compares his feelings about the platform to a phobia.
Alun Wyn Jones got slaughtered this month for refusing to pass off Joe Marler’s groin-grab as ‘banter’, as though the boorish toying of genitals to an audience of millions should be laughed about, even lionised, as part of rugby’s hilarious LAD culture.
George North, Jones’s Wales team-mate, has 40 tries in 95 Tests but deals with trolls on a “daily basis”. “You should never play for Wales again,” said one. “Here’s your P45, I’ll sort it out,” chimed another. Danny Cipriani, unfathomably, took a pasting for his beautiful tribute to ex-partner, Caroline Flack, in the wake of her desperate passing last month.
On the tamer end of the scale, if there is such a thing, a ‘fan’ wrote: “Pete Horne, you’re stealing a living” to the Scotland centre and PRO12 champion immediately before one of the national team’s finest performances in recent memory. Few in Scottish rugby work as hard or give as much to the cause as Horne. Few get pilloried as frequently.
“I wish you never wear the shirt again.” That was a message that greeted Gordon Reid, among the most thunderously likeable characters in the game, after another Scotland Test. Some of the squad received much more noxious stuff during the ill-fated World Cup.
“Why are we wasting money on someone old and past it?” read a Tweet from a Leicester Tigers supporter on the recent signing of Nemani Nadolo. Would the author of this post have repeated it aloud to the face of the 6ft 5in, 130kg Fijian? If he had, Nadolo would have laughed and turned the other cheek because that’s the kind of bloke he is.
Nadolo has been racially abused in the past, in person. Simon Zebo has had that kind bile hurled at him too, during a Champions Cup match at Ulster. As a young woman, Rhona Lloyd, the Scotland wing, got teased for being too muscular and developed such a complex over her body image that it drove her to skip weights sessions issued by the national selectors. Ugo Monye was bladed for his television punditry on the day his wife suffered a miscarriage.
This is sordid stuff, right? This isn’t the rugby many of us recognise or the community we cherish. But this smattering – and it is only a smattering – of poison is merely a drop in the cyber-ocean. There’s a whole lot more of it out there, stinking the place out.
Coming soon on @RugbyPass pic.twitter.com/dERpAwAUBi
— Jim Hamilton (Vice Captain) (@jimhamilton4) March 24, 2020
The vast majority of the public don’t have a clue what it is like to be a professional rugby player in 2020. They don’t see the eye-watering volume of fitness, drills, set-pieces, attacking moves, defensive shapes, weightlifting, dieting, analysing, prehabbing, rehabbing, planning, meetings and all the rest of it that goes into making a career of this glorious sport.
They don’t feel the relentlessness and the ferocity of the hits, car-crash collisions that seem to grow more vicious by the season. They don’t operate in front of thousands – sometimes millions – of people on a weekly basis. They don’t live their lives under anything like the same level of scrutiny.
Of course, rugby players are on the whole paid handsomely for their toil, but that doesn’t make them fair game. There’s a pretty obvious line between performance critique and outright malevolence. A player knows when they have not played well – they don’t need 52-year-old Dave from High Wycombe issuing a bombastic reminder of how crap they were so they, their family and friends can read it.
Some can shed that nonsense as easily as taking off their coats, but on a certain level, it still stings. Others take it much, much harder. How often must it be said? Being a hulking athlete with a 180kg bench press and the body-fat percentage of Mr Olympia does not render one emotionally bulletproof.
THE @johnbarc86 COLUMN
'…many players will have played their last games for their clubs, or even of their careers, without knowing it.'https://t.co/OBx3TT4ZPq
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) March 21, 2020
Physically, the game has never been tougher, but mentally too, the toll is immense. Seasons nowadays stretch on longer than Saving Private Ryan and are almost as brutal. The irony is that it has taken the heinousness and tragedy of a global pandemic to give some players’ bodies a proper rest.
After Flack’s death, social media was awash with pledges to ‘be kind’. So soon afterwards, the filth has seeped in again, if indeed it ever left. People, frequently, are not kind, particularly when it comes to sport. Players have insecurities and vulnerabilities and demons like the rest of us.
Players succumb to addiction and poor mental health. Hundreds of them have spoken about it, among them some of the finest minds and toughest figures in the game – Jonny Wilkinson, Graham Henry, Eddie Jones. Many more are suffering still.
Rugby likes to trumpet its values long and loud. There’s a superiority complex here, an unedifying sneering at ‘lesser’ sports like football. “Ah, but you’d never see a referee being abused in rugby.” Except that you would.
Refereeing a different type of scrum https://t.co/e7VhWoOpNe
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) March 21, 2020
Ask Nigel Owens about homophobic slurs, or Bryce Lawrence about being threatened with violence. In fact, you even saw Jones, the most famous coach in the world, effectively calling an official a cheat after a recent match and shamefully escaping any serious comeuppance. This moral high ground is being eroded.
Hogg, Ashton, North and others have described the relief of withdrawing from social media. The Scotland full-back has handed over access to his accounts to his agency and feels a good deal happier and healthier for doing so.
Twitter and Instagram give us such wonderful platforms to do good, to interact with players, foster closer bonds between fans and their heroes, but if we want to keep it that way, we can’t go on like this. We have to do better. If we don’t stop the idiocy, we are going to end up with broken players, a toxic online habitat and a grossly diminished game.
WATCH: Ben Foden chats to Jim Hamilton in the latest episode of The Lockdown, the new RugbyPass series
Comments on RugbyPass
He was in such great form. Sad for him but only a short term injury and it will be great to see him back for the finals.
1 Go to commentsAfter their 5/0 start, I had the Crusaders to finish Top 4 only…they lost the plot in Perth but will reload and back themselves vs 4th placed Rebels…
3 Go to commentsBoth nations missed a great opportunity to book a game that would have had a lot of interest from around the world. I understand these games can’t be organised in 5 minutes but they should have found a way to make it happen. I don’t think Wales are ducking anyone but it’s a bad look haha.
3 Go to commentsIt will be fascinating to see the effect that Jo Yapp has. If they can compete with Canada and give BFs a run for their money that will be progress
1 Go to commentsFollowing his dream and putting in the work. Go well young fella!
3 Go to commentsPerhaps filling Twickenham is one of Mitchell’s KPIs. I doubt whether both September matches will be at Twickenham on consecutive weekends. I would take the BF one to a large provincial stadium so as not to give them the advantage and experience of playing at Twickenham before a large crowd prior to the RWC.
3 Go to commentsvery unfortunate for Kitshoff, but big opportunity potentially for Nché to prove he is genuinely the best loosehead in the world, rather than just a specialist finisher. Presuming that if Kitshoff is out, it will also give Steenekamp a chance to come into the 23? Or are others likely to be ahead of him?
1 Go to commentsA long held question in popular culture asks if art imitates life or does the latter influence the former? Over this 6 nations I can ask the same question of the media influencing the thoughts of its audience or vice versa. Nobody wants to see cricket scores in rugby, as a spectacle it is not sustainable. With so many articles about England’s procession and lack of competition it feeds the epicaricacy of many looking for an opportunity to pounce. England are not the first team to dominate nor does it happen only in rugby, think Federer, Nadal, Red Bull or Mercedes, Manchester Utd, Australia in tests and World Cups. Instead of celebrating the achievements why find reasons to falsify it pointing towards larger playing pool, professional for a longer period or mitigate with the lack of growth in other nations. Can we not enjoy it while it is here and know that it won’t last for ever, others coveting what England have will soon take the crown, ask the aforementioned?
6 Go to commentsShame he won’t turn out for the Netherlands now they’re improving. U20s are Euro champs and in the U20 Trophy this year. The senior sides gets better every year too.
3 Go to commentsWill rugbypass tv be showing these games?
1 Go to commentsWell where do you start, the fact that England have a professional domestic league and Ireland’s is fully amatuer, that they have fully seperated professional squads at Fifteens and Sevens (7’s thinly disguised as GB), and Ireland have fully pro Sevens squad who loan some players back to the Semi-Professional Fifteens squad (moved from amateur for only a year or so) for a few games at 6N & RWC’s. The Women’s games is a shambles, and is at risk of killing itself by pushing for professionalism when the market isn’t really there to support it outside one or two countnries..
6 Go to commentsWayne Smith's input didn't have as much impact on the last final as Davison's red card for Thompson. England were 14 points up and flying when that happened.
6 Go to commentsBilly's been playing consistently well for 2 - 3 seasons now and deserves a look in at the top level. Ioane and ALB are still first choice but there needs to be injury cover and succession. His partnership with Jordie gives him first dibs you'd think. Go the Hurricanes.
3 Go to commentsIt’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
3 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
36 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to commentsSouth Africa rarely play Ireland and France on these tours. Mostly, England, Scotland and Wales. I wonder why
2 Go to commentsIt was a let’s-see-what-you're-made-of type of a game. The Bulls do look good when the opposition allows them to, but Munster shut them down, and they could not find a way through. Jake should be very worried about their chances in the competition.
2 Go to commentsHats off to Fabian for a very impressive journey to date. Is it as ‘uniquely unlikely’ as Rugby Pass suggests, given Anton Segner’s journey at the Blues?
3 Go to commentsSad that this was not confirmed. When administrators talk about expanding the game they evidently don’t include pathways to the top tier of rugby for teams outside of the old boys club. Rugby deserves better, and certainly Georgia does.
3 Go to comments