the game. Anyway, now you can hurt
people without them.
The pro game is played by behe-
moths who can spend all week in the
gym and have their diets monitored
and their supplements graded and
tailored to their needs. They are big-
ger, stronger, faster than ever before.
They have more time to train and
improve, and the best are expected
to play 35 to 40 high-intensity, high-
impact and, yes, downright dangerous
games a year. The best NFL players
play no more than 20 games. I love the
game, but rugby can’t survive like this.
Can it? Pundits relish the ‘hits’, the
‘smashes’, the tackles that ‘body bag’
an opponent: think of the ground-
shuddering collision when Jerome
Kaino stopped Jamie Roberts in Tou-
louse’s tight win over Bath. Nobody
died, for sure, but are you certain that
will never happen?
Talking of legalised violence, I
can’t imagine that readers of this
journal have much knowledge of the
octagon, the arena for cage fighting —
sorry, mixed martial arts, as it likes to
call itself. It is hard to convey the sheer
ghastly brutality of this ‘sport’ — not
to mention its followers. Now — sur-
prise, surprise — Vladimir Putin, who
likes to get himself front and centre
of any passing sporting event, has
met the Russian cage fighter Khabib
Nurmagomedov after he beat Conor
McGregor in a hideous brawl in Las
Vegas. After the bout, mayhem brokeE
ddie Jones’s sorrows as Eng-
land’s rugby coach certainly
keep coming in big battalions.
Now the giant battered No 8 Billy
Vunipola is out of the autumn interna-
tionals, and maybe longer. His brother
Mako is hurt too, along with Sam Sim-
monds, Jamie George, former skipper
Chris Robshaw, Joe Marler (retired)
as well as Uncle Tom Cobley, the
noted back row forager. They won’t
go away, though, these injuries.
How do you get people to want to
excel at a game not where you ‘might’
get injured but ‘will’ get injured, prob-
ably badly? Rugby at school level is
an excellent game. The best players
representing lst XVs in the Schools
Cup are likely to turn pro and earn a
good living. The game they currently
play is contested by physical speci-
mens you or I would recognise, the
likes of which played top-level rugby
a few decades back — men like Mike
Slemen, David Duckham, JPR, Jean-
Pierre Rives, etc. And no one will
get punched or stamped or gouged,
because these activities have pretty
much disappeared from all levels of
out, with the Russian jumping out of
the cage to belt all comers. Support-
ers of each fighter joined in and went
berserk. Horribly unedifying.
Not for Putin, however, who said
he had heard that McGregor’s camp
had insulted Khabib’s father and his
country. ‘Not just you, but all of us
can jump out like that if assaulted,’
he said. Worth bearing in mind at the
next confrontation with Russia in
Estonia, or some such hellhole.T
here are mistakes — like Bath’s
Freddie Burns carrying on as if
he were taking a bow at the Palladium
before failing to touch down — and
there are strange errors of judgment,
like England deciding to play a series
of one-day cricket internationals in
Sri Lanka during the monsoon sea-
son. A quirky, even Trumpian, atti-
tude to climate. Still, it gave us the
chance to see Olly Stone bowl a few
overs (very fast they were, too) and
get an international wicket.
One correspondent to ESPN said
that seeing the letters ‘RF’ next to an
England bowler’s name brought a
tear to the eye. Those of a certain vin-
tage won’t need reminding that ‘RF’
is the shorthand used by publications
such as the Playfair Cricket Annual
to describe what bowlers do. ‘RF’
means right-arm fast: very rare for
an English bowler. Usually it’s ‘RMF’
— medium fast. Welcome, Olly, and
please don’t slow up.Q. My fiancé and I spend many
great weekends with another
couple. I am a vegetarian and
quite particular about certain
food textures and I cannot stand
slimy foods like overcooked
mushrooms or undercooked eggs.
The husband of our good friends
prides himself on the brunches he
rustles up on the Sunday of these
weekends, presenting the others
with full English breakfasts and
me with scrambled eggs on toast.
I don’t quite know what he does
to these eggs but they appear
in front of me in a semi-liquidform, soaking into the toasted
bread. I really need to figure
out a way to stop this without
offending our hosts. We’ve got to
the point where I am presented
with a mountain of this gloopy
mess without being asked. I
cannot request just toast the night
before. How do I overcome this
predicament?
— Name and address withheldA. No one over 35 would hesitate
to make the straightforward
request: ‘May I just have toast
today?’ In your generation,
however, hypersensitivity about
giving offence has become
something of a new religion. The
solution of claiming a late-onset
egg allergy was rejected by you
in our private correspondence
as ‘too detrimental to the many
meals out and indulgences we
enjoy with the couple in question’.Fortunately, food neuroses are now
mainstream, so you can claim to
be on the 5:2 egg avoidance diet.
Never mind that such a diet doesn’t
exist yet — just say you have set
aside Sundays as one of the two
days per week on which you don’t
eat eggs.Q. I am still at university but have
just taken a job as caretaker in
a building only yards away from
campus. The job comes with a
small one-bed flat. I am anxious
about what to do when student
friends start to drop in saying
that they are desperate to use
the loo. What if I don’t want
them to because I know there’s a
disgusting smell in there because
I’ve just made it?
— Name and address withheldA. Remain calm as you shudder:
‘You’re welcome to use it butI wouldn’t recommend it. The
builder upstairs has just been in.’Q. A friend’s niece who got her
first job last year and still lives
with her parents is coming from
Belgium to stay with him in his
London flat. She has asked him
to book a table for three (herself,
my friend and his partner) at one
of the most expensive restaurants
in the capital. How can he make
sure that she intends to treat
them, as there is no way that they
can afford a massive restaurant
bill at the moment?
R.T., ShropshireA. He should act daft and email
or ring to say, ‘It’s a very generous
thought but are you sure? We
would be just as happy going
somewhere less expensive and we
are equally happy to cook dinner
for you in the flat.’Spectator Sport
Injury time
Roger Alton
Rugby pundits
relish the ‘hits’,
the ‘smashes’,
the tackles
that ‘body bag’
an opponentDEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED