9:50am Friday 21st November 2008
By John Payne
To boo or not to boo – that is the question.
Forget the easy win over that bizarre pick-and-mix XV the previous weekend, the unpalatable fact was that England were well beaten by the Wallabies in their first proper match under Martin Johnson’s stewardship.
Now, no one likes losing to the Aussies at the best of times, not least when we had been led to believe that Johnson would wave his magic wand and make everything in England’s rugby garden rosy.
So I would like to say a hearty thank you to whichever spin doctor let it be known that RFU president Brian Williams had written to the Australian high commissioner this week, in doing so making the behaviour of the Twickenham crowd the main focus of the after-match stories this week.
While Johnson was laudably picking virtually the same XV to face South Africa tomorrow, rugby’s great, good and not so good were all being quizzed on the real issue of whether or not to boo an opposing player as they take a penalty.
The fact that it became such an issue took attention away from the fact that the reason the home fans were booing so regularly is that England gave away so many kickable penalties in an astonishing show of indiscipline.
Perhaps it was some of Johnson’s charges who should have been on the wrong end of the jeers, considering they were the ones repeatedly at fault.
To his credit, Matt Giteau and Stirling Mortlock were totally unmoved by the show of bad manners as they kicked their country to victory.
And, in fact, the home fans who were presumably aiming to put the kicker off probably had the opposite effect.
Ian McGeechan reckons a stony silence is more intimidating than a chorus of boos.
From a different sport, one of my favourite footballing memories was Stuart Pearce getting dog’s abuse from the Manchester United fans after the 1990 World Cup.
“Psycho is a German” was the most printable of their ditties and he was greeted by a shrill of whistles as he ran up to take a 35-yard free-kick... until the Stretford End was left silenced by the ball dropping into the top corner.
Bad manners have long been accepted in football. On Wednesday, you could have been forgiven for thinking both the German and British national anthems were being played with a recorder.
It will take more than a ‘respect’ campaign for football to know the meaning of the word, but it would be terribly sad if rugby went down the same road.
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