This week has offered the world a prime example of how rugby can over-react thanks to the incident involving Alan Black at the Wasps versus Clermont Auvergne.
Putting it into perspective, you basically had an old guy ‘attacking’ a professional rugby player with a programme. The said professional player was already involved in another fracas with a second player and neither really noticed the intervention of said ‘attacker’ Black. Why? Because Clermont prop Martin Scelzo is 6ft 2in and 20st and his Wasps counterpart Tim Payne is 6ft and almost 19st – both rugby behemoths. While Black is a bloke in his sixties brandishing nothing more than a few bits of paper stapled together.
So why the over-reaction? It’s down to telly. And commentators saying there’s no place in the game for this kind of action. If he were talking about someone attacking players with the intent to do real damage then it would be fairplay. But, let’s be honest, an old fella attacking a player with a programme is actually quite funny. Embarrassing for the guy in the aftermath. Embarrassing for the stewards who didn’t pull him back. But in no way should it warrant an over-reaction from both pundits and officials alike who suggest that nothing short of a public flaying will suffice. As it turns out, Black is a highly respected chap and had lots of sensible friends in high places to fight his corner such as Alex King, Lol Dallaglio, Shaun Edwards et al.
This isn’t the latest in a long line of incidents, it’s the first of its kind for some time. When we’ve got a sport usually only interrupted by the odd streaker, it seems churlish to have a bash at Black. As it is we’ve got a ban until the end of the season and that’s more than enough by anyone’s standards. If the issue gets brought up again, then we clearly have nothing better to talk about. And if the French forward complains about Black then he should really be ashamed of himself – we could have incidents, as football does, where you’ve got routine thuggery among fans and incidents of violence on a regular basis. So we should be thankful for what we have got rather than making more of what was a real ‘nothing’ incident. Although maybe this won’t be the end of it, maybe we’ll have replays showing the point of contact when the programme ‘struck’ the Wasps player with all the force the old fella could muster. No doubt there’ll also be reports from the Wasps and Clermont Auvergne physio rooms about the delayed reaction from the players to the frenzied programme attack.
Let’s hope this is the end of it. As Dallaglio pointed out at the same time as Black stretched across to rap the players across the head, another player had been smacked several times by the monster-sized fist of an opponent. The skipper also pointed out it was about ‘perspective’ – something which our
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