Paul Lewis: Stoush beat-up ridiculous

The fighting after the Auckland Grammar-Kelston Boys game last week. Photo / Murray Job, Sky Sport

What a great bucketload of hogwash was unleashed with media coverage of the brawl at the end of the Auckland Grammar and Kelston 1st XV rugby game.

This newspaper broke the story last weekend - albeit without over-egging the thing as some did in the aftermath.

The matter was transformed from a rugby brawl into some kind of monstrous bloodbath; a heinous attack on our civilised values.

One writer even attached to it the fact that the numbers of brutalised babies in New Zealand had increased.

Some commentators and columnists gave themselves free rein to spout some of the most spurious nonsense. "It went for five minutes," thundered a zealous custodian of public outrage.

Actually, if you watch Murray Job's camera work for Sky on YouTube, it went for just over two-and-a-half minutes. One hundred per cent exaggeration. Not bad...

Another commentator frothed at the mouth on the radio, saying professional sport had so warped the minds of our youth that they were given to such dastardly deeds.

Oh, please. Get over yourselves. It's rugby. You know, a contact sport. The people who say these things are generally the ones who have only ever been on a rugby field after everyone else has got off it.

They are the quasi-intellectual snobs who didn't or couldn't play the sport so decided it was the domain of the brain-dead and the brutish; as if it is not possible to have a brain and athleticism.

None of what took place is condoned or accepted. But, in true media fashion, some strove to beat this up (pun intended). One writer, in a journalistic leap of stupendous proportions, introduced the fact that, just up the road, research at Starship Hospital showed the numbers of babies aged under two with traumatic brain injuries had risen greatly.

Huh? How's that again? Fight between rugby boys equals more baby bashing? No, it doesn't.

If you watch the full coverage of the Battle of Grammar-Kelston, it all began straight after Grammar scored a try. In my opinion, a Kelston player flopped on the ruck after the try is scored.

As any rugby player will tell you, that is a provocative act. It's an unwritten law - you don't physically interfere with a player who has just scored a try; when they are unprotected and when the game is basically halted before beginning again with a new kickoff. The Grammar bloke who reacted also did wrong.

What followed did no credit to either school - but you will see the like every now and then in contact sport; when tempers overwhelm discipline and restraint. It usually flares up, is calmed down and transgressors are dealt with by the judiciary process.

In this case, the fight spread to reserves on the sideline and some other people, spectators or "civilians" of some other description got involved, some trying to stop the thing but actually inflaming it further.

The villain of this piece was not rugby, nor some kind of nebulous link between sport and the ills of society. It was security; or the lack of it. This was college rugby - one of the most competitive forms of the game, where tribal instincts and passions can run high.

More than 2500 people and nothing separating those on the field from those off it but a piece of string, with emotions awash. Some people on the sideline were reportedly drunk and abusive - centimetres away from the action. A recipe for a mess; precisely what they got.

Watch the coverage. The fight boils and then seems to peter out - exactly what happens when those on the field are left to sort it out. But someone else gets involved off-camera and the whole thing flares up all over again.

It must also be said that rugby is a game where some of the normal rules of society are suspended. It has implied consent, as the lawyers call it. That means anyone who goes on a rugby field is implicitly consenting to being "assaulted" in a way that would not be acceptable in the ordinary walk of life - although no one has the right to punch someone.

It's right that the kids were sanctioned and the clear message sent that brawling will not be tolerated. It's sad some are now stirring it up along racial lines after what appeared to be skew-whiff punishments.

But, typical rugby, the authorities did not help themselves. They said nothing when a few well-chosen words up front would have explained why the punishments were different; defusing the "not fair" protests. Then it turned out one of the committee had a son at Grammar - but wasn't stood down after he declared it.

The TV footage also has shots of players from the warring teams embracing each other after the fight.

That's what the non-rugby, quasi-intellectual, quickly-outraged nursemaids of society never understand - that the people beating seven bells out of each other for 80 minutes can share a drink and a joke in the 81st.

It's the great truism of contact sport. The aggression is (usually) left on the field. I once covered a boxing match where the combatants went at it like they wanted to kill each other. Afterwards, I found them sharing a drink and asking after each other's wife and kids.

I played in Wales once where a big horrible forward deliberately kicked me in the back. I thought, for a moment, my legs were paralysed as I momentarily lost feeling. To my eternal discredit, I later dealt to this bloke as he ran out of a lineout with the ball.

I was sent off and was punished further by being stood down for two weeks. Fair enough. Oh, and the big, horrible forward and I shook hands later that day, had a drink together and a laugh. We never became best friends but we played against each other the following season and got together again after the game.

It's not always that way but contact sport doesn't equal baby bashing, nor mirror the ills of society. If the nursemaids want a target for their outrage, they might try movies like American Gangster, supposedly the stimulus for a horror night of random violence in a recent, highly-publicised Auckland court case.

Or Kill Bill. What's worse - a stoush in a schoolboy rugby game or a movie where some tart with a samurai sword kills everyone in sight? Try that out on the minds of the susceptible and the potential baby-bashers.