I’m will to be bet that no one in America who isn’t from a Commonwealth country knows it, but the Rugby World Cup started Friday night in England, with the home side playing the opener against Fiji. People are quite excited about it here. Not Super Bowl stupid levels of excitement, but as excited as Brits are allowed to get. The Cup itself was on display at Spitalfields market the other day and there was a gigantic line of people of all ages and sexes waiting to have there photo taken with it. A woman at Judie’s office was told that holidays are out for the next six weeks because her husband and son cannot miss any of it.

When we lived in Australia, I used to casually watch Rugby League and the Rugby Union matches when The Kangaroos played The All Blacks (New Zealand). The highlight for me was the start of the games with New Zealand when the All Blacks gather in the center of the field and do the Hakka, a Maori war chant with appropriate steps and and arm motions and the sticking out of tongues. When they do it Aukland before a sold-out crowd, the place is in an absolute frenzy at the end. It is really worth seeing. (Fiji did their own war chant before playing England the other night, but, since they were playing over here and it is just Fiji and not the mighty All Blacks (multiple world champs), it didn’t have the impact.)

Judie was running late from work on Friday, so I decided to watch some of the England-Fiji game. I found that, while I loosely recalled the general rules, there were countless things that I didn’t understand and the strategy was a complete mystery to me. I kept finding myself thinking “Why is he kicking it now?” or “Why did that guy with the ball just run straight at the other team?” or “Why is there a scrum now?” or “Why is it most of these idiots don’t wear helmets?” or “I wonder how many of them have concussions by the end of the game?”. It is a baffling game that is mostly smashing into the other team and occasionally lateraling the ball (but never passing forward) or kicking forward for no apparent reason. It seems like it must be a primitive game or at least derived from a primitive game in which the serfs got a pig’s bladder and beat the crap out of each other. I suppose I’ll end up watching it a little, just to be able to talk to the rest of the country. I’ll let you know if I ever figure it out.

One final really weird thing about English Rugby: For reasons that apparently are not entirely clear, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is the unofficial anthem of the English Rugby team, which the English fans sing loudly and boisterously whenever the lads pay a game. There is now some debate about whether it is appropriate for a bunch of drunken white fans to be singing a black spiritual about slavery. (Imagine if it was a tradition to sing it at the Masters golf tournament and the reaction in the US.) Actually, I don’t think there is much question that it is entirely inappropriate, particularly for a white, upper class sport that has had a history of ugly racist incidents. But there isn’t much chance that this will change.