Malcolm Boyle: Friendly taps a big mistake

Mistakes should not be rewarded with bum pats. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

I can handle honest cock-ups in sport as well as the next punter. But I'm dammed if I can cop this curious practice which has taken hold in professional rugby and rugby league.

You'll see it time and again in Super Rugby or the NRL: a player makes a mistake so he raises his hand in a mea culpa moment to his team mates. That's the signal for a succession of team mates to rush in with a variety of bum slaps and "there, there" hair tousles. This is so blatantly a bit of hocus pocus dreamed up by team witch doctors (aka sports 'psychologists') to impart a dose of bro-love for the errant player.

It's interesting to analyse this football sorcery. If a player "gives himself up" as the perpetrator of a schoolboy blunder varying in degree from lost possession to (the most serious) a conceded try, his self-incrimination can trigger a range of "never mind, she'll be right mate" reactions from his team-mates. First, there's the matey slap on the back (translation: check your number here next week pal, because with that cock-up you'll be riding the bench).

Then there's the buttock tap (translation: don't mistake this for encouragement, I'm just lining up your backside for a kick up the arse if you do that again).

In between there's a variety of low-fives and vocal exhortations feigning forgiveness by the annoyed team-mates. And there's the head-rub (translation: haven't you got a brain in there, you idiot?).

So the show-them-the-love approach is not for me. I like my sport uncomplicated, simple and direct and not too subtle.

The most effective example of this approach was that of the former great Castleford Rugby League player Malcolm Reilly who went to Australia in the late 1980s for a spell with Manly in the then Winfield Cup. He arrived in Sydney from England on a Saturday morning, and played that afternoon.

As the players took the field Reilly ran to his captain and asked: "Who's toughest player?"

"What?" replied the non-plussed captain.

"Who's toughest player in t'other team?" Reilly elaborated. He was identified and Reilly knocked the player out with a thumping stiff arm tackle. Running past his captain again, Reilly asked "Who's next toughest player?"

Only the really great or really ancient players are apparently allowed to vent, but this is hardly ever seen in public; offenders usually being reamed in the sanctity of the dressing room (notwithstanding the presence of a camera). Former St George Dragon coach Nathan Brown controversially introduced the face slap in full public view, a tactic Western Suburbs coach Roy Masters had used in the '70s.

So pseudo support for mistake-makers registers on my muck-up meter at about the same level as grunting in women's tennis.Malcolm Boyle is a former owner of the Warriors, manager of the rugby league All Golds, a former senior club rugby league player, journalist and sports marketing expert.