Know-it-all, among other things, I say that the sports that thrive most in Italian sports culture are those in which one can express (speaking of team sports) a strong individual identity. Of course, it's obvious that in any team sport, without certain mechanisms, you won't get anywhere. But in soccer (I'm using soccer as an example, but there are other sports as well), if you have the phenomenon or thanks to an "improvised" play, you can win the tournament, or even a weaker team can win a match. In rugby, this doesn't happen. The world champion England won because it was the strongest team, not because of Wilkinson, even though he is a great player, a superstar. But the specific weight of a phenomenon in the game’s economy and the final outcome is undeniably lower. Rugby is organization, coordination, and strength, perfect overall mechanisms. The individual technical baggage is less than what's needed in other disciplines, and I'm not saying this with disdain. No rugby player can ever win a match on their own; in soccer, such a statement is much truer, but also in basketball and volleyball. The basic individual technical actions in rugby, while reaching excellence, are not enough to guarantee victory; it takes the WHOLE team to cross that damn line. And if we analyze them one by one, we have running, passing backward, kicking, all seasoned with great physical strength... in short, these are not gestures that require a lot of time or innate talent to master.
And anyway, today South Africa (the world champions, right?) - no one cared about Italy. But we know, poor champions don’t have the Haka, eh no one gives a damn about them. It’s not like it was playing in glamorous Milan, who cares? And, of course, we performed terribly. Because it’s a niche sport, and unfortunately, it will remain so, because few play it in Italy, because a rugby field on the peninsula is still a rarity, and even more so to see children playing on it, and because Italians (who have a sports culture nearly close to zero) will never get excited about these courageous wardrobes. I admire them for their courage, but their feats do nothing to thrill me.
Italians are lazy, individualistic, inconsistent, selfish, but they are also clever, shrewd, sometimes genius, and capable of bursts of generosity and sacrifice when their pride is wounded. That’s why I believe (but I've probably already said this ten times) that rugby will remain relegated to those commendable provincial realities but will never rise to be "popular" in all corners of the peninsula. We will always have a pool of players that is barely more than laughable. And since we are also a people who drink everything, eighty thousand filled the Meazza. And there was even some rhetoric around this hype because, I repeat, in two hundred other sports, they don’t kill each other in the stands, and no one keeps breaking the balls to keep saying it. Because the story of the Haka is an insult to the Maoris (and many people showed up just to see that!!!), because the third half seems the minimum in a sport where unsportsmanlike conduct could be defined as "criminal code." And to top it all off, they try to pass off ogre Chabal as a sex symbol to promote rugby (oh my... still better than that faggot Beckham)!!! Jesus Christ, it really is too much, enough. All this with the utmost respect for those who truly love and practice this sport, as someone who truly loves and practices other sports. You should be the first to get pissed off about this circus. I hope I’ve been clear. It doesn't seem to me that my arguments are completely unfounded. I thank GERMS, with whom I share every single line too.
