Oddly Shaped Balls

I have no idea whether or not Professor Allyson Pollock is right about rugby. But I know why her critics treat her as, in her words, "a traitor to some cause."

Rugby defines many subcultures, and even entire peoples, as different.

As neither British (or, these days, American) nor Australian. As neither North Welsh nor English; as Welsh while, often militantly, unable to speak Welsh.

As a Scottish Borderer, and thus still liable to encounter, even if less baldly, the attitude to the young David Steel when he visited Glasgow. The son of a Past Moderator of the General Assembly, he was asked if he was "enjoying [his] visit to Scotland."

As an Afrikaner, defined precisely by not being at least half a dozen other things, past and present.

As an ancestral Basque or Catalan from the South West of France, where next to no one still speaks either Basque or Catalan, thereby necessitating other signs of distinctiveness. 

Ireland is, as ever, more complicated. But playing rugby marks out particular social groups in different parts of Ireland. As, with a strong political element, does very insistently not playing rugby.

In England, by far the strongest following, including the schools where the game is compulsory, is very easy to identify.

That section of society is as distinct as any of the above in their respective countries or, in New Zealand's case, neighbourhoods, and it is considerably more so than several of them.

Yet until the advent of the present Government, those people were just about able to pretend that they were this country's historical norm, and at least still a part of its mainstream.

But the reaction of the real norm and of the real mainstream to a regime that had come to power in a sort of coup in spite of the mere result of a General Election has opened even their eyes to reality.

Having given themselves a five-year term, they have lasted long enough to watch the depiction of them change from anger to remorseless ridicule and utter contempt.

Therefore, they cleave even more closely and fiercely to their defining cultural peculiarities.

Afrikaners, and ancestral Basques and Catalans from the South West of France, are central to their national lives by comparison.