TOM EATON | Poor old Keith can’t see the Wood for the trees

As the Springboks stack their reserve bench with a mountain of muscular meat ahead of Saturday’s World Cup game against Ireland, former Ireland great Keith Wood says that South Africa’s over-reliance on huge forwards is unsporting. And I couldn’t agree more.

“If you go back to the original view of the game,” Wood told Planet Rugby, “it’s a game for all people and sizes and it’s to try and have it so it is safe and fair.”

He’s absolutely right. If you, like Wood, “go back to the original view of the game”, then what the Boks are doing is outrageous, because the original view of the game is very clear about who should play rugby, and how.

Firstly, it should only be played by schoolboys at Eton and Harrow, and, at a pinch, male students at Cambridge and Oxford, who are the only sort of students allowed at Cambridge and Oxford, since this is the mid-1800s.

If, however, you are some kind of sporting anarchist, and you want to wrench this game into a cynical and grubby future in which a noble pastime for children becomes a competition between nations, then there are certain very specific conditions under which it should happen. 

Yes, Keith Wood is absolutely right. All sports should adhere to the ‘original view’. That’s why Formula 1 cars look exactly as they did in 1948, and no human has run 100 metres in under 10.8 seconds, and cricketers don’t wear helmets.

To wit, if you are going to ignore Wood’s original view of the game, and tolerate the existence of international Rugby Union Test matches, then the following must be strictly policed: 

• All players shall stand no taller than 5ft11, weigh no more than 65kg, have twirly moustache, lambchop sideburns, hair parted down the middle and Brylcreemed flat, and be called things like Nobby Bottoms and Hamish McBlood.
• Any player who unsportingly grows taller than 5’11, or weighs 66kg and above, is clearly a brutish South African, New Zealander or Australian and should be deported back to their hellish colonies at the earliest convenience to continue their foray into giantism far away from innocent bystanders.
• All players and referees shall work full-time jobs in a variety of trades and professions, and only attend training for rugby when the factory gives them their annual afternoon of leave or the invasions of Afghanistan, Crimea or Zululand are suspended.
• The only countries that shall play international matches against each other, now and in perpetuity, are England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and, if they ask extremely nicely and keep their Johnny Foreigner filthiness in check, the French.

Yes, Keith Wood is absolutely right. All sports should adhere to the “original view”. That’s why Formula 1 cars look exactly as they did in 1948, and no human has run 100 metres in under 10.8 seconds, and cricketers don’t wear helmets, and only men are allowed to play at Wimbledon, and not a single sportsperson anywhere in the world gets paid to do it for a living.

But now I must leave you to go and send Wood a telegram expressing my admiration, and then it’s down to the river for a spot of light opium smoking, and then into a handsome cab and home to see what Cook has made me for elevenses.

So until next week, au revoir and bon chance, my friends, and may we all continue to gambol about in the reality-free Neverland of Keith Wood’s imagination.