Fear of Penalty3

English translation of ‘La peur de la peine: un compte anthropologique de la diffusion du rugby,’ Ethnologie Française, v.41, n. 4, Oct 2011 THE RUGBY PLAYER'S FEAR OF THE PENALTY: HISTORY AND SPORT DIFFUSION Tony Collins International Centre for Sports History & Culture De Montfort University, UK [Abstract: The importance of the penalty to rugby union is a reflection of its origins in the mid-Victorian English middle-classes. In general, the English leadership of rugby did not want it to ‘diffuse’ and fear of the penalty, both off and on the field, became one of the sport's defining characteristics. This paper argues that the term 'diffusion' is not sufficient to describe the process of expansion of a sport; the ways in which it is disseminated by its advocates is also crucial. Résumé: L'importance de la peine de rugby à XV est un reflet de ses origines au milieu de l'époque victorienne anglaise classes moyennes. En général, les dirigeants du rugby anglais ne voulait pas qu'elle «diffuse» et la peur de la peine, à la fois hors et sur le terrain, est devenu l'une des caractéristiques définissant le sport. Cet article soutient que «diffusion» du terme ne suffit pas pour décrire le processus d'expansion d'un sport, les moyens par lesquels elle est diffusée par ses défenseurs est également crucial. Mots-clés: Sport. Rugby. Diffusion. Dissemination. Rules. Adresse personelle: 80 Pasture Lane, Leeds LS7 4QN, UK. Adresse institutionelle: Professor & Director, International Centre for Sports History & Culture, De Montfort University, The Gateway, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK. Adresse email: [email protected] Of all ball-based team sports, rugby union is unique in the importance of the penalty to the result of a game. For example, in the 2010 Six Nations tournament, penalty goals were the most common method of scoring points, comprising forty-five per cent of all points scored in the tournament. In the six rugby union world cup finals contested since the tournament began in 1987, forty-one penalty goals have been scored in contrast to just nine tries, four of which were scored in the inaugural final. This predominance of the penalty goal sharply differentiates the sport from all other types of football. In rugby league, the sport's closest cousin, the value and thus the importance of the penalty goal was reduced in 1897, just two years after the split in rugby that created the league and union codes. In American, Australian and Canadian football, early offshoots from the original code of rules based on the game played at Rugby School, the concept of the penalty goal does not exist. Only in soccer does the penalty play an important role in determining the result of a match, but this is due to the low-scoring nature of the sport, in which a single goal can determine the outcome, rather than the frequency with which the penalty goal itself is scored. This is not merely a quirk of rugby union's scoring system. Many reformers have campaigned, and continue to campaign, for a reduction in the value of the penalty goal. In 1955 the former England captain and president of the Rugby Football Union (RFU) Wavell Wakefield complained that 'there are too many penalty goals scored in most games' [Wakefield, 1955: 6]. The dissidents who formed the rugby league code had argued before the 1895 split for the primacy of try-scoring over goal-kicking. Yet the rugby union authorities have steadfastly refused to reduce the value of the penalty. Even though a try in rugby union has been worth more points than a penalty goal since 1971, the importance of the penalty goal to the final result of a match has not diminished. ‘Despite the try value being increased from 3 to 4 to 5 points, the impact of penalty goals on the final result has hardly changed over the last 50 years,' explained a 2005 report by the International Rugby Board [IRB, 2005: 5]. This paper argues that the importance of the penalty to rugby union is not a mere technical feature but a reflection of the sport's internal culture. Rugby union was a creation of the mid-Victorian English middle-classes, who sought order and hierarchy in social relations. To maintain this hierarchy, the sport's leaders developed an elaborate code of behaviour and an extensive structure of sanction against those who transgressed. Fear of the penalty, both off and on the field, became one of rugby union's defining characteristics. For scholars of the expansion of sports, this development of rugby also suggests that the ways in which that sports are consciously disseminated by their officials and supporters are as important as general trends of diffusion. The Penalty Goal, Professionalism and Structures of Sanction The introduction of the penalty - and subsequently the penalty goal - were part of the process by which the leadership of the RFU sought to control and restrict the influence of those they felt to be alien to the game. In the first decades of rugby’s history, when the game was confined to young men educated at university and British public schools, the control and regulation of matches attracted little discussion. Even after the formation of the RFU in 1871, matches were conducted according to the participants’ shared social background and appreciation of the purpose of the game. Disputes were resolved by discussions between opposing captains. It was not until 1874 that the rules of the sport even referred to the control of a match. 'The captains of the respective sides shall be the sole arbiters of all disputes,' read the newly amended Law Six. [Royds, 1949: 30]. By the mid-1870s it had become the custom for each side to provide an umpire, who would be the first resort should a dispute over the rules occur. As in cricket, from which the idea of the umpire had been borrowed, the umpire could only intervene if a player made a direct appeal to him about a breach of the rules. Until 1882, no sanctions were specified for an infraction of the rules. At Rugby School and some rugby clubs in the 1860s, it was the custom to allow the non-offending side a hack below the knee against a transgressor following an offence. The ban on hacking in the RFU’s first set of rules seems to have led to the practice of a scrum being formed following a breach of the rules, but again this was due to an unwritten but mutually understood shared code of behaviour [Collins, 2009: 76]. This system of regulation through informal codes broke down in the 1880s, as the appeal of the game spread far beyond its original narrow constituency. The massive increase in the number of working class players in the game was acknowledged in 1880 by RFU secretary Arthur Guillemard, who pointed out that ‘the recent foundation of a large number of clubs in the North has resulted in the drafting into club fifteens a large proportion of tyros [neophytes], who may know how to drop and place kick, but are unlearned in the various points of the game’ [Guillemard, 1880: 58]. Although initially welcomed, the new-found popularity of the sport among the industrial proletariat soon came to be viewed with concern by leaders of the RFU. ‘It is an open question whether this interest has not been attained at the expense of our noble sport,’ pondered RFU secretary Rowland Hill in the Football Annual of 1882 [Hill, 1882: 21]. By the mid-1880s, there was a widespread fear that working-class participation was driving out the middle classes. In response to these perceived dangers, the RFU began to shift control of matches out of the hands of the players. In 1881 it decreed that umpires should be neutral rather than representatives of the two teams. In 1885 a referee had to be appointed to a match with the mutual consent of both teams. The role of the referee at this time was mainly confined to arbitrating on disagreements between the two umpires, but, crucially, he could intervene in cases of violent play or players disputing the officials’ decisions. In 1889 the RFU gave the referee the power to send-off from the field any player disputing his decisions. Thus two of the great fears of the middle-class player - being subject to violence from those he believed to be socially inferior, and the questioning of his authority - were addressed. As part of this new system of regulation, in 1882 the RFU amended the rules to allow a free kick to be awarded for offside. This initially took the form of a punt or a drop kick, and the rules explicitly stated that 'no goal could be scored from it'. The free kick penalty was gradually applied to other offences but it was only in 1886 that a place-kick could be taken as a penalty and a goal scored directly from it. In 1892 the rule was extended so that penalty kicks could be awarded for all infringements. The penalty goal was now written into the rules [Royds, op. cit.: 175]. The same fears that resulted in the playing code of the game was being rewritten were also manifested in the debate about payments to working-class players. Until 1886 the RFU had no rules relating to amateurism or professionalism. But as great crowds flocked to matches in the industrial north of England, it became an open secret in that leading working-class players received covert payments for playing. At its October 1886 general meeting, the RFU banned all forms of payment to players, with the explicit aim of halting the influence of the working-class player.

Load more