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Detractors of rugby view the sport as a game of collision, a smash of bone, muscle and sinew as 30 men in jockstraps squabble over a silly olive-shaped ball.
But even rugby-haters acknowledge the beauty of a well-coordinated charge by a line of backs, the balletic grace in a good lineout and the team spirit that runs through the sport at every level.
The strange nuances of rugby - its interplay between grunt work and delicacy, confrontation and camaraderie - have now entered the world of art, explored by several French playwrights and choreographers in performances on the sidelines of the World Cup.
One of the most ambitious shows, playing in Paris, is a play called J'ai, which translates into "mine" - the call by a player lining up an up-and-under.
Written by Guillaume Ranou, a promising amateur halfback who turned professional actor, it tracks the shifting moods and thoughts during the transition from training to the big match.
To help the audience get a feel for the game, theatregoers find their seats by walking through a makeshift changing room where old sweat-stained rugby jerseys are hung, press cuttings are displayed, videos replay famous tries and the stench of liniment hangs in the air.
In the first part of the play, the actors, taking part in mock scrums and the like, reflect on the vagaries of life as seen through the prism of rugby, quoting from writers and philosophers such as Samuel Beckett, Rene Char and Michel Serres. The second part of the play is more animated, with lots of jokes and pushing as the actors re-enact the famous try by Richard Dourthe against the All Blacks in the 1999 semifinal.
Critics have been kind to J'ai, saying that they don't care for the tedious philosophising of the first part, but find the second part rather fun - a play of two halves, so to speak.
"J'ai is an extraordinary gamble, an attempt to mix pitch and stage, scrum and soliloquy, yet without losing the sense of rugby posts and stage curtain," said reviewer Elsa Mingot.
Team spirit and the rituals of rugby inspired Michel Belletante to revive and update a 1995 show, Vestiaires (Changing Rooms) which is touring the rugby-mad southern areas of France.
The play lasts 80 minutes, thus mirroring the duration of a match, and features 18 players in a changing room before and after the game, with their hopes, fears and opinions intended as a microcosm of humanity. In Belletante's view, rugby can change lives, projecting people beyond themselves through moments of solidarity and exaltation.
"Some matches are like theatrical dramas," he says, noting Serge Blanco's last-minute try against Australia in the 1987 World Cup semifinal, which gave France victory.
New Zealand's rugby culture is well to the fore in this minor cultural surge. In Aix-en-Provence, the local Preljocaj ballet company choreographed a tribute to the haka, enacted by 15 ballerinas dressed in replica All Blacks shirts.
And the brand-new Quai Branly museum in Paris, which specialises in exhibitions on the primitive arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, has set up a mock rugby pitch on its roof and is conducting workshops on the moko.
"Rugby is actually very close to what we're showing here," said Branly's director, Pierre Hanotaux.
"But we can't kid ourselves. It's also our way of bringing in people who never come to museums because they find museums boring."
