Something all rugby fans need to remember... particularly Bok fans

It is said that comparison is the thief of joy, but try telling that to any sports fan. For supporters, comparison isn’t theft; it’s sport’s unofficial national pastime. The moment you show someone a highlight reel or an end-of-season table, the brain flicks into ranking mode. It is impossible not to contrast one player’s career with another, to hold one team in the light of a rival’s glow and wonder which one is superior. Sport, after all, is an exercise in establishing superiority, in empirically and numerically proving dominance.

We have winners and losers. We have scoreboards and league tables and world rankings. Right now, you can find out who we here at RugbyPass believe is the 73rd-best men’s player on the planet and who, controversially, we think is nine places above them.

A quick disclaimer: none of it is controversial. None of it should be taken remotely seriously. Comparing players in different positions or systems is to veer into flights of fancy. The whole thing is a parlour game disguised as analysis. And that’s fine. Comparison may be the thief of joy, but it can also be a delightful way to kill time with friends and family over the festive period, somewhere between the leftover turkey sandwiches and the arguments about whether Die Hard is a Christmas film.

What it should not do is cause so much consternation. If you picked a thousand rugby fans and asked them to compile a list of their top 100 players, you would get a thousand different responses. When I was asked to name my top 50 Ashes cricketers of all time for the Guardian, I was shocked to learn that two fellow contributors failed to include Donald Bradman. Donald Bradman! If The Don is not a universal pick, then objectivity has long since packed its bags.

You might think Antoine Dupont is the best. You might agree with World Rugby and have Malcolm Marx at the summit of the oval game. The point is, there is no consensus. There is no universal truth. As Jeff Bridges famously quipped in The Big Lebowski, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

Fixture

Internationals

South Africa

08:00

22 Aug 26

New Zealand

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So why do we lather ourselves into a frenzy when someone disagrees? Why take an alternative view as a personal insult? Somewhere along the way, the harmless joy of sporting debate has been replaced by something closer to ideological warfare.

This week, Jeremy Guscott, the former England and British & Irish Lions centre, poured cold water on the developing position that Rassie Erasmus’ Springboks are the greatest team of all time. In The Rugby Paper, he wrote:

“My sense is that South Africa in 2023 were not as dominant as world champions as they were in 2019, or as dominant as New Zealand in 2015, or England in 2003. This is because since 2019 the top teams have all beaten each other, and although the Springboks are the strongest side, they are beatable having sustained a number of defeats.”

Fair is fair, right? Reasonable opinion, backed by evidence, respectfully delivered. Yet if you’d glanced at the comments section under any piece reporting on Guscott’s words – let alone scrolled through the sludge on social media – you’d assume the Bath legend had danced on the grave of Nelson Mandela and then kicked a penguin on Boulders Beach for good measure.

The reaction was not merely disagreement, it was offence. It was the sense that Guscott had violated something sacred. Because that’s what fandom increasingly resembles – a form of soft-core nationalism where your team is not just a team but an extension of your identity. To say the Springboks are not the greatest team ever isn’t, in some corners of the Internet, interpreted as a judgement on a rugby side. It’s interpreted as a judgement on South Africans themselves.

And South Africans are hardly alone in this. New Zealanders bristle at any suggestion that Richie McCaw’s All Blacks might already have been usurped. English, Irish and Scottish fans regularly inflate their World Cup chances. Italians and Argentinians share their displeasure at what they deem perpetual disrespect. Every nation has its pressure points, its sacred cows, its reflexive defensiveness. The Boks may have the loudest current chorus, but the hymn is universal.

Part of the problem is that the modern fan ecosystem runs on algorithms that reward fury. Nuance does not trend. A calm, “I respectfully disagree,” gets the same traction as a failed line-out throw. But declare that someone’s opinion is the worst ever expressed by a human being and suddenly you’re viral.

Another issue is that we’ve lost the muscle memory for playful disagreement. Sport used to be the safe space where you could argue without consequences. Who’s better, Dan Carter or Jonny Wilkinson? Which World Cup final was the greatest? Who would win a hypothetical match between the 2015 All Blacks and the 2023 Springboks on a floating pitch in the Indian Ocean? None of these questions have an answer, and that is precisely why they are fun.

Which, ultimately, is the whole point. Comparison is only the thief of joy if you let it be. If you accept that your ranking is exactly as subjective as everyone else’s – no more, no less – then you free yourself to enjoy the noise, the nonsense, the glorious messiness of sporting discourse.

So go ahead: argue that Eben Etzebeth is the greatest lock ever, or that Finn Russell is rugby’s Picasso, or that Henry Pollock may yet be the most electric back-row of his generation. But do it with a smile. Do it with generosity. Do it knowing that, like all the best sporting questions, none of it really matters and that’s what makes it beautiful.

Because if sport ever did arrive at a universal consensus, if we all agreed on one ranking, one champion, one GOAT across all time, the conversation would stop. And without the conversation, a huge piece of the joy would vanish too.