Serious side to a sociable tournament seems a little cynical
IN the aftermath of the blood, sweat and beers Carlsberg rugby 10s last week, winners Aliens were regarded by many as exactly that.
The Kiwi element in the team approached the game against the British dominated White Hart Marauders with the intensity of a Test match. The resultant stiff-arm tackles, deliberate stomping and high challenges were indeed reminiscent of several matches of late involving the All Blacks.
The overtly physical and at times brutal confrontation had less hardened players in the crowd wondering at their own sanity for even considering taking the field against this mean brigade.
But earlier in the competition many had competed against the seemingly unmerciful and been shown mercy. They came off the field with the accepted assortment of bumps, bruises and bloody wounds but nothing more.
The Aliens and White Hart Marauders, dominated as they were by seasoned international players, varied the degree of ferocity according to the opposition.
With Ben Clarke, Peter Winterbottom and Tony Underwood, who all toured with the British Lions in New Zealand last year, up against good pedigree Kiwis like Kevin Schuler, Scott Pierce and Oscar Iwashita it was always going to be an X-rated final.
The rest of the sociable tournament may have been a pleasant diversion from the serious stuff many of these guys had been playing all season but no way was anything less than 100 per cent commitment going to be shown in what was basically a battle of supremacy between the hemispheres.
While that does not excuse the rough stuff it goes some way to explaining it. And if you play rugby to an international standard a certain degree of callousness has more than likely crept into your on-field persona.
It's the referee's task to keep that brutality well in check and while his officiating was certainly not up to international standards the Hong Kong whistler did a fair job in cooling some overheating tempers.
Aliens captain Pierce, who calmed from raging bull to reasoned gent in the split second it took for the final hooter to blow, had every sympathy with the referee and the task he faced on the day.
''Let's be honest, would you have liked to have refereed that one?'' asked Pierce. ''He was warning players all through the game - if it had not been stop, start like that things could have got completely out of control.'' Pierce was articulate in his summing up of the match and his words could have been interpreted as that of an apologist or a realist.
He said: ''If we had not been physical we were going to be up against it as they were an excellent side, very big, very fast. A lot of people seemed to have thought the physical stuff was all one-sided but I think there was a little bit [of nastiness] both ways.'' Welshman Colin Hillman, the Marauders captain, took the philosophical line in his interpretation of the hostilities.
''Some of the things were a bit over the top but we are not going to make a big issue of it. That's rugby, in inverted commas, after all,'' was his statement.
Clarke's viewpoint might have differed somewhat from the above but he was preoccupied with nursing his broken nose and made no immediate comment.
If there is a rematch in next year's final one suspects his slant on the happenings will become crystal clear.
