it's a truism that the introduction of money to a sport increases the propensity and rewards for cheating, it's the whingeing to the ref and the diving that i can't stomach.
is it better to cheat to win or to cheat to lose? i can't recall the latter in rugby.
Cheating to lose ? You mean match fixing ? When you're talking about football you're talking about a multi trillion dollar international industry, in any industry that size you'll find saboteurs just wait until Rugby gets to that level and then remember this thread when The Sun tapes a place kicker taking a bribe to miss penalties. It's probably already happening, it's probably already happening as we speak.
Football reflects the world, the whole ugly, racist, ignorant, petty unjust money hungry selfish world and everything in it. That's why you get quotes like Albert Camus
'"Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football"
Rugby has always been a sport which attempts to remain a bastion of integrity while at the same time to many it represents the worst aspects of the elitism that's inherent in society. It's hypocracy in that regard has always been staggering.
This is the same debate I've been having for years
"In rugby we don't surround the ref or try to blatantly cheat by faking an injury
What about the fake blood ?
Yeah but he got banned for 4 months
Ah.. the niavity, the illusion of "justice" being served and now the game remains pure. It's the thin edge of the wedge my friend.
No....eh .... Rugby's not like football because it's a thugs game played by gentlemen .... etc"
and on the rhetoric goes
As soon as it became professional, it opened itself up to the same grubby individualistic self interest and pettiness which is inherent in any capitalist pursuit.
Football is the world we live in. A utopia of injustice and hypocracy where the best team rarely wins, a third world country wins the top prize half the time, a man is a commodity which a corporations can own for life, And the only winners is whoever sits on the biggest pile of cash at the end of the day. And we love it because we know all of this and we just don't care because life isn't fair. Why should we pretend it is and expect football to reflect a pretence in anyway other than pretence ?
Listening to Rugby supporters is like having a conversation through a time machine with some plebeian back in some bygone era where kings were anointed by god and all was fair in love and war, virginal and noble.
Fuck that, you took the money so it's over, now come play in the mud with the rest of us.