Rugby World Cup 2015: 17 things that will really get on your nerves

THE Rugby World Cup will no doubt be great. But some things about it will still get on your nerves. Here are some of the worst. Warning: contains happy Poms.

1. Getting up in the middle of the night to watch games

Technically most of the games are on early in the morning but with Australia’s first game against Fiji ending the wrong side of 3am on a Thursday morning there’s going to be a few offices running on less than all guns that day.

2. The bloke in your office wearing his England/Scotland/Ireland/Springboks/All Blacks shirt to work

Many of us find ourselves sharing workspaces with our friends from the UK and across the ditch. That’s fine. Why wouldn’t they want to come here, after all?

But when these sporting shindigs come around things change. And Dave — good at getting the coffees in, tidy desk, mild mannered, good value at the Christmas party — suddenly becomes a for-Queen-and-country, true blue Pommie blowhard and won’t stop talking about Jonny f’ing Wilkinson.

Give it a rest, mate, we know where you’re from.

Sports shirts in the workplace — only acceptable when a bet was won or lost.

3. Bad merchandise. Really bad.

A Rugby World Cup branded mouthguard. On a key ring. If you have $12 spare that must have item could be yours. Alternatively, you could set fire to your blue and chuck the two dollar coin down the drain. And probably feel better for it to be honest.

Wha ... That’s a mouthguard, on a keyring? Erm ... why?

4. Face paints. On adult men and women. Please.

Fun for the kiddies, sure. But, like skateboarding and using the phrase ‘totes amazing’, if you’re north of about 13 please think twice. Actually, think once, and think, I’m a grown adult human being, face paints are not for me.

5. Constant re-runs of ‘that’ Wilko drop kick

Yes, we all still remember it. And, yes, it was a pretty dramatic end to the match that showed nerves of steel and an eye for precision. We get it. But do we have to watch it over and over? On a related note, if you know someone who always tells you ‘he actually kicked that with his wrong foot, you know’, they should not be your friend.

6. One-sided pool matches

We’re all for spreading the good word and bringing more countries in to the fold (we’re not talking rugby league here after all). But there’s something unseemly about watching professionals run over teachers, plumbers and overweight out of work actors like they are a pub team rather than a national team. If you enjoy watching bullies pick on the weedy kids until they soil themselves you are a terrible person. Please look away.

7. Having to try and learn the rules (and ultimately failing)

At the last estimate there were about 14 people in the world who know all the rules to rugby. Four of them retired games masters from English public schools who require around the clock care, several geography teachers from rural NSW and (hopefully) a few of the referees at this year’s tournament.

Rather than trying to get your head around them in a short period of time, better off learning a few generic catch all phrases for when things get messy — “C’mon ref, get a grip on this/McCaw just plays his own rules and gets away with it, eh?” etc and so on. Under no circumstances call someone as off-side, you will invariably be wrong.

8. More terrible merch

This. Just this:

Nothing says fun like a few lightening bolts on a T-shirt, eh?

9. Fat men wearing tight-fit replica shirts

In the pre-professional era rugby shirts, other than being so heavy if you fell in a river wearing one you might as well as had brick in your pockets, were largely forgiving items of casual wear. They were made to cover all builds of players and so those rotund front rowers did us all a favour.

Those days are long gone, however, and now official replicas are cut from that strange figure hugging sudo-Lyrca sweat-wicking fabric favoured across the sporting world. Unless you have the body shape of a professional athlete this does not work for you. So steer clear.

10. The scrum (is this a sport or a pushing competition?)

If the scrum in rugby league is a sporting appendix, with no one sure what it’s actually there for, the scrum in union is like the lungs of a twenty-a-day merchant. Breathless, ugly and requiring a great deal of careful managing. To the rugby tragic it is a vital part of the sport where battles are won and lost, to the causal observer it is nothing more than a pushing contest, one that no one ever seems to win.

11. New Zealand … it just means so much to them, eh bro?

We all love barracking for our teams, but when a World Cup comes around our friends across the ditch take their fanaticism to another level. Not so much a sporting event as a validation of nationhood. Obviously they play the game on another plane to the rest of us. Fine. But that just makes it all the funnier if/when they stumble against the French. Fingers crossed.

12. And yet more awful branded tat

No words are needed ...

Families that ‘onsie’ together, should stay together (well away from the rest of us).

13. Repetitive advert breaks

While Fox’s coverage is of course excellent, the repetitive nature of the featured adverts can begin to wear. Take it from someone who watched every day’s play of the Ashes, and so saw that ad featuring a smug couple having Zen like wisdom imparted on them by an Italian caricature restaurant owner roughly 1,793 times over seven weeks, and was one more viewing away from becoming part of a news story that ends with the phrase “and then the gunman turned the weapon on himself” as a result.

14. Watching code-hoppers doing their thing

A particular gripe for the NRL crowd out there tuning in to the 15 man game this spring. When Izzy Folau first runs headlong in to Sam Burgess there will be plenty of Storm, Broncos and Souths fans imagining what might have been.

15. Celebrity obsession

Not exclusive to rugby, of course, but what is the obsession with cutting away to celebrities in the crowd during sports matches? The day someone cares whether Ed Sheeran is at the Scotland v Springboks encounter or not is the day they should start asking some searching questions about decisions they’ve made in their life to that point.

16. Lazy, jingoistic national caricatures

The Pacific Island nations will be physical; the Americans surprisingly organised (but pulling out some gridiron moves every now and again); and which French side will turn up today — no one knows. Then maybe go and do some research as to their form and selections and come back to us.

17. Politicians jumping on the bandwagon

As our latest glorious leader beds in to The Lodge wanting to distance himself from the previous regime, he has at least one easy win: give the Wallabies a good luck message without calling David Pocock Dylan. Or Daisy. It will still sound insincere and shamelessly populist, of course. But at least he won’t look like an idiot.

Originally published as Rugby World Cup 2015: 17 things that will really get on your nerves