There are few things more satisfying than playing a good game of rugby and one of them's playing an awful game where the other team don't have a hope. My uncanny ability to pull a muscle has so far limited the amount of this I've done so far this season but I've managed my latest comeback and my gods it is good.
However, there are a few niggling concerns. A few things that mar the enjoyment. Frustrations that I believe others can share, not least because most people reading this play with me and I'm fucking atrocious. So - tongue firmly in cheek - the ten things that annoy me most on a rugby pitch.
1) Getting up from a ruck and seeing the backs drop it/slice it out on the full/give an intercept pass/everything else negative. Bonus marks if it wasn't actually a back but rather a forward who's convinced he has mad skillz.
2) Every time someone gets a bit roughed up - high tackle, collision off the ball, that sort of thing - and someone runs in to start a pushing match. Not to punch them but just to have a good push. Half the time whoever did it is a good ten yards away from what happened by the time they got there.
3) Being about to get up from a ruck only to have next phase's pick and go land right on you because someone decided they could run upright into the biggest player around. They couldn't and now both of them are about to compress your kidneys.
4) Picture it. Its been raining for three days before the game and there's somehow another three days worth of rain coming down right now. You've seen ploughed fields more suitable for rugby and the ball's greasier than cheap chicken. Someone's made a break. He's got support. The full-back tackles him and, rather than go to ground and trust his team to ruck over, he goes for the death or glory offload. Needless to say, there won't be glory but, honestly, even if there was, I'd still be annoyed. Taking high risk moves because they're more fun it part and parcel of social rugby but can people at least wait for good conditions before pretending they're Fijian?
5) On a similar note, getting up from a ruck to see your team halfway up the pitch with a gilt edged opportunity only to watch them somehow bollocks it up. Not only did they not get the try, you've now got to sprint up there instead of casually sauntering back to the halfway line and the water bottles.
6) There's also the annoyance of getting up from a ruck and seeing that the ball's been dotted down without a clue how it happened. Couldn't they have waited that extra few seconds for you to share in the emotional thrill? Also, for some strange reason, these always seem to involve thirty yard runs by props, even if the last ruck was five yards away from the line.
7) Poorly thought out tap penalty moves. We've all seen them, we all know them, we all hate them. Bonus points if the intended receiver wanders off into the backline and the scrum-half panics and picks the fly-half as a crash ball option after a good three seconds of dithering. Or the receiver is already level with the scrum-half by the time he's tapped the ball. Or when a forward takes it and thinks he'll dummy a pass and go himself. Or...
8) I hate dogging on refs. They come along and get it in the ear just so I can have a good time. That's not right really. However, sometimes we do the things we hate, because some refs don't make it easy for themselves. The ref I've come to dread the most is young, keen, knows the laws really well and has great eyesight. The average game of rugby at any level has a potential infringement every five seconds, nevermind at my level. A good ref knows what's important and what's not. Pedantic refs who do not are a misery, particularly when they don't have a sense of humour. No one plays rugby to have a penalty every thirty seconds.
9) Quick throw ins. There are two types of quick throw ins in this world. The first is when there's no one around at all and the forwards have to sprint up the pitch rather than having their well deserved break. The second is when there is someone around and the poor receiver is going to get buried. By some strange quirk of fate, the former only ever seems to happen to the opposition and the latter only ever seems to happen to my team. I wouldn't be quite so annoyed by them if it was the other way around.
10) Doing these things myself. It is easy to be forgiving and slap your team mate on the back and say "Don't worry, heads up". Its a lot harder to be forgiving when you're the knucklehead fucking up everything for everyone else. So the worst thing really is doing things like this myself. Admittedly my style of play means a lot of them just don't happen very often, but I still remember the time I threw a really sloppy offload...
... when already over the try line.
But I'm sure scrum-halves have a very different list of annoyances which contain things I am guilty of.
Anyway. There we go. I apologise for wasting two minutes of your life.
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