Pascal Pape and rugby's Twitter apologists engaging in the fine art of PR spin

Reproduced with permission from Whiff Of Cordite

WITH ALL THIS new-fangled social media carry-on, the latest fad among rugby players is to take to Twitter to publicly apologise to afflicted players for acts of foul play.

Two recent proponents have been Pascal Pape, who took to the Twitter machine to apologise to Jamie Heaslip for his knee-in-the-back incident, and Ashley Johnson of Wasps, who performed a similar act of manly contrition, after he took Dave Kearney out in the air in the ERCC a few weeks ago.

It’s all a bit glib for our tastes, frankly. If Pascal Pape is indeed sorry for his actions, he should say it directly to Jamie Heaslip, rather than taking to public fora to do so. It’s all very well publically showing yourself to be a jolly good fellow, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s all a bit of PR spin, and something the lawyers can point to in the disciplinary hearing to get a more lenient sentence.

Who’s to say their coaches didn’t tell them to do it? As it happens, Pape’s ‘remorse’ got his ban reduced from 15 to 10 weeks. One thing that couldn’t have been in Pape’s favour is his disciplinary record, which stands at 28 career yellow cards and two reds. Nice going.

It also forces the hand of the injured party to be seen to be equally manly, and accept the apology in a display of solidarity in the name of rugger, or risk being seen to be a prancing prima donna better suited to roundball. Far better to appear gracious than get into some sort of unedifying spat.

‘No problems, old chap, it’s a physical game and these things happen’, replied Jamie Heaslip, or words to that effect. What he probably would have liked to say was ‘Listen here Pascal, I’m out of the Six Nations with three fractured vertebrae, so thanks for that. It’s a physical enough game as it is without deliberately kneeing other players in the back. Next time you’re entering a maul, try to keep the old knees down a bit so as to cause fewer spinal injuries.’

Those who appear to get the most out of these risible stunts are certain fans, who instantly get all excited and quickly begin to applaud everyone involved, and rejoice at the sheer manliness and jolly-hockeysticks bravado of it all. How noble of Pape! How gracious of Heaslip! How manly these chaps are! Truly, rugger is the king of sports, where you can break a chap’s back and all is forgiven because it’s all in such great spirit!

But really, it’s little more than self-satisfaction; the reality is they’re patting themselves on the back for the magnificent act of being a fan of such a ruddy great sport. After all, this sort of boys-will-be-boys mateyness would never happen with soccer players, the filthy oiks! Truly, they lack the appopriate levels of manliness!

But if people want to celebrate this most noble spirit of egregious foul play followed by easy apology-making, count us out. Leave it to the citing commissioners to dole out the punishments, and if there are apologies to be made, keep them private, rather than looking for kudos from the public.

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