Rugby: Yobbo syndrome is upon us

By CHRIS LAIDLAW

The bellicose bottle-throwers of Wellington last weekend drove home the awful realisation that rugby is slowly joining the company of all those other professional sports where crowd violence becomes part of the package.

While the little display of histrionics at the end of the Bledisloe Cup match might not seem to be quite in the class of the spectator mayhem that has become the ugly alter ego of European soccer, the symptom is unmistakable.

Rugby crowds just ain't what they used to be and the causes of that are much the same as those experienced by other sports that have mutated from ordinary physical contest to professionally packaged entertainment.

There were some in the administration of rugby and many beyond it who imagined that our particular game could be somehow transformed from amateur to professional without this kind of unsavoury side effect, without the militaristic displays of spectator anger that blight so much of professional sport elsewhere.

We should be so lucky. There are two basic reasons why we aren't so lucky.

For the most obvious of reasons, rugby is one sport that lends itself almost perfectly to this syndrome. The violence of a body contact spectacle is inherently capable of stirring the juices of extremism among those who must only stand and watch.

When the two additives - alcohol and the subliminal impact of advertising hype that promises a massive collision - are injected into the mix, the potential for explosion is virtually limitless.

Professional rugby is now vigorously marketed as big-hit time, not perhaps as crassly as rugby league, but the gap has been narrowing and the new breed of spectator, an entertainment junkie who goes along hoping for blood, is pretty disappointed when he doesn't get it.

The second cause is more subtle. The professionalisation of the game has opened up a vast gulf in wealth between those who play and those who watch.

Those who watch are obliged to pay considerably more for the privilege of contributing toward the financial well-being of the players, and some pretty negative energy has been generated as a result.

Evidence mounting in the United States in the four big pro sports - football, baseball, hockey and basketball - all highlights this simmering resentment among so many of the spectators towards not so much the players but the game itself and those who run it.

There is enough anecdotal evidence in this country to suggest that the same pattern is beginning to emerge here.

Last year, some of that anger was directed, irrationally, at John Hart, the handiest target, and to a lesser extent, Taine Randell and several of the players.

Last week it spilled over in Wellington and, for the first time in New Zealand rugby history, a referee was set upon.

Those who go over the edge are, like their counterparts in English soccer crowds, normal, otherwise ordinary, law-abiding citizens. We are not talking Mongrel Mob here.

Happily, New Zealand rugby is still at the bottom of this nasty escalator.

The big question is, of course, whether the only direction is up.