The Great Rugby Fallacy

Jon Griffiths just argued in the Sabotage Times the universal classless support of rugby in Cymru/Wales. He answered his own argument when he mentioned Merthyr Tydfil; small middle class, one small rugby club. When I joined the local rugby club my mother told me that I was getting too big for my boots. Before 1971 Lions tour not many working class Welsh outside of Llanelli supported the game, I'm from Merthyr and within one mile of my house there were 7 football pitches but not even one rugby pitch. Rugby tourists would come to Cymru/Wales, meet up with passionate Llanelli supporters and take them to be typical of the country as a whole. There are far fewer rugby clubs than soccer clubs, and thousands more spectators watched soccer in the towns: Cardiff; Swansea; Newport; Merthyr; Wrexham; Aberdare; Llanelli; Bridgend. The 1971 tour raised the games profile so much that there are now about 6 rugby clubs in Merthyr (2 of which were not in the old county borough) but there are still 20 to 30 football clubs. After 1971 and after decades of soccer mediocrity, rugby began to touch the hearts of the working class Welsh, giving us something that binded us together as a nation that everyone could take pride in, even the north Walians began playing it, it gave us back a word that every Welsh person could identify with, a word that had been a long time coming: 'success'. In the old industrial town of Merthyr there was a very middle class reception in Afon Tâf High School to welcome home the Welsh contingent of the 1971 Lions, but in the mean time the onetime small rugby club has moved up at least 6 divisions, promotion attained over a number of years consecutively until they are one step away from the vanguard of the nation's teams. A bit like the Labour Party in a way in that it's become a way to get on and for a minority, to get out.