The Wallabies played Wales at the Sydney Football Stadium yesterday, we had some cheap family tickets through the rugby club so went along for the meat pies and expensive but weak beer.
Although it’s always fun to attend an international rugby match even when one’s team isn’t involved, this game stretched that theory. The score at the final whistle was 20-19 in the Wallabies favour. That result flattered the spectacle of what was a fairly turgid match redolent of the Five Nations circa 1988. Based on that performance, I’m considering sticking a few dollars on Argentina winning one of their 2 forthcoming fixtures against the Aussies.
Anyway, regardless of their ineptitude, I cheered for the green and yellows. Why? Because Wales is a ridiculous principality.
Note that I didn’t say “country” there. Principality. What is a principality anyway? And why is the Prince of said principality not actually Welsh, but English (well, German with a splash of Greek to be precise)?
And what of the Welsh themselves? What are they all about?
Speaking as an Englishman, I see the worst traits of the immediate English neighbours in much of the Welsh psyche; the hubristic yet uneducated aspects of Birmingham combined with the untrustworthiness and workshy nature of Liverpool. When one looks at the Welsh in the context of their position as the geographically large but demographically minor extra county of “West England”, it’s clear that they are just the bastard sons of some überBrummies and überScouse.
And what of the small demographic who have a reasonable intellect? They end up dying an early death through alcoholism or get to play the pantomime villain in movies (after they’ve overcome alcoholism).
Of course, you might be wondering why the sudden outpouring of bile against the retarded cousins at the United Kingdom family wedding? Well, I went to school in England in the 1970′s. Our headmaster was a windbag with the surname Thomas. “Thomas the headmaster”, I suppose they called him in the village back home in the valleys, to distinguish him from “Thomas the baker” and “Thomas the derivatives trader”.
The Welsh rugby team were dominant back them and just to add insult to injury, every Monday morning after a Five Nations weekend at school assembly he would have a suitably gloating religious-themed sermon to drop on us. I remember thinking at the time that it said more about his lack of character than it did about ours and, rest his soul, I now realise that he was unconsciously teaching me an important lesson about his countrymen fellow principalitatrians.
And that is why I will never cheer the Welsh rugby team unless there happens to be a fixture against a combined invitational Robert Mugabe/Waffen-SS Barbarians XV.
