The simple joy of sport
Jolyon Maugham QC thought that BBC story about the male rugby player joining a women’s team was just lovely.
How the simple joy of sport can transcend fear and hate. Wonderful reporting.
Mm. Can it also transcend the male physical advantage? The ability to fold a female opponent “like a deck chair”? The risk of injury to opposing players that the male manager treated as a joke? The woman who doesn’t have a place on the team because the man does? Many people asked, but Maugham did not enlighten.
No one – not her, her opponents, her team mates, the sporting regulatory authorities – is complaining in this piece. All are trying, with dignity and care, to adapt to a world that is not binary. A pity some of my respondents are unable to do the same.
Yes, if only we would adapt to men taking women’s places in sport. If only we would adapt to the obvious unfair advantage. If only we would adapt to the risk of injury to women. Why are we so obstinate?
She’s going to be a good player, as long as we can stop her injuring players in training.” I guess all those injured female players should transcend their pain by celebrating the joy of sport, right?
You missed out that that (explicitly) was a joke. And that she is friends with the only person at the wrong end of a size advantage she can do nothing about. And that she feels guilty about her size but can do nothing about it.
I wonder who, and what, you are arguing for?
That’s easy. Women. What is Maugham arguing for? Men displacing women.
Sure she can. She can play in men’s leagues.
The more you know about rugby, the more appalling this is. The scrum is a central part of the game, and Kelly is undoubtedly a forward using her strength/size to make their scrum near unbeatable, and exhausting to play against. Tired, overmatched opponents have their scrums collapse, creating both tactical advantage from penalties, and dramatically increasing the risks of injury. The props have to hold their position in the front row in a grueling test of stamina and strength, preventing that from happening – collapsed like a deck chair strongly suggests that the opponent simply could not hold up any longer and was forcibly folded at the waist.
There is a damn good reason why rugby the world over happily trains children to ~12 together, then segregates them – the same age group that full-contact scrums are introduced.
No. We didn’t. We recognised that it was a joke. That’s what we were objecting to, the idea that unstoppable physical violence by a man against a woman is funny.
Isn’t that amazing? That he doesn’t get that?
The ‘stop injuring players in training’, i.e. teammates, was a joke. The ‘folded an opponent like a deck chair’ was not. And the first joke is probably a real concern at times.
If ‘she’ feels guilty about her size, she should bloody well find something else to do. Tiddlywinks, perhaps. I honestly do not understand these people: they know full well that because of the physical superiority conferred on them by the fact of being born sexually male they have a natural advantage, and they then wilfully take advantage of that as well as the present very unsatisfactory situation whereby ‘trans-women’ are allowed to play as women, and, faced with any criticism, especially from those who are most affected by their unfair advantage, they take refuge in obfuscating cant about how they are hated, et. I know how dangerous a game rugby can be. Hundreds of years ago I was the captain of rugby at a Welsh college – we used to play miners’ teams from the valleys, and that was, well, I shan’t say. But because of injuries received at school and college and in playing for town teams, I had a bad neck and back for years. Which reminds me, I saw once at Twickenham a good English centre break his neck when making a tackle; he was stretchered off, and so far as I know spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Folding opponents ‘like a deck chair’ – rugby is not a laugh, and the game now is far more thuggish and dangerous than when I used to play it.