There was indignation, outrage, pique and scorn emanating from Durban’s Shark Tank last week. Huff went viral. Umbrage took off. Rage and resentment flooded the zone when the effrontery of Jaden Hendrikse was broadcast from Kings Park.
The knowing smile and the wee wink from the Sharks’ place kicker as he lay on the ground having his hamstring stretched and happily obstructing the disbelieving Jack Crowley’s attempt at goal.
Fans in Limerick were livid. Cork was on the cusp of rebellion again.
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We thought it might prompt some kind of a scathing rebuke from the United Rugby Championship in a Zoom call on Wednesday with chief executive Martin Anayi. But, no.
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This week, platforms and eyeballs, YouTube figures and broadcast peaks – and the URC brand raking in 150 million viewers since it started in 2021 – were the main talking points.
Anayi then freely skated over Hendrikse’s antics and Crowley gamely effing the Sharks officials and players as an emotional tsunami washed over Irish rugby. Instead, he pivoted to the benefits to the URC of the whining Irish, the underhand South Africans and some of the merits of Crampgate.
The URC attitude seemed more shaped by the payload of page impressions and scroll depth it delivered than by the shamelessness of the act itself.
“Ultimately, we want characters in the sport and when you have characters and when you encourage people to show their character, that can be positive and negative,” said Anayi.
“There are heroes and villains in all stories, great sporting stories. I think that’s kind of what is emerging here, isn’t it? Needless to say, it certainly spiked an interest in the league.”
Well, that’s it, isn’t it? Spiking interest in the championship, gaining greater purchase in the market. Still, the URC are only picking up on what the World Rugby website told them when they clicked on the About Us icon.
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“World Rugby recognises that rugby union is competing for the public’s attention in an ever more varied and complex media and entertainment-driven world, but also that the federation properly embrace matters touching on social responsibility,” it begins.
What langers we were for living in the old world of respect and integrity and not stepping into the new rugby vista of broadcast viewership, YouTube, X and Instagram. The match and its acrimonious end was the most viewed highlights over two days that the URC has ever had.
In terms of turning a negative into a positive, this was a stunning performance by the URC chief, with the unsaid part being that we can park the rugby values piece and talk about that another day. And of course, he had a point.
Reducing the number of Welsh clubs in the league to two or three, the emergence of the Club World Cup and Italian rugby’s place in the European game were 10-fold more important talking points for the URC to consider.
It wasn’t like it was Bloodgate, where Tom Williams used a blood capsule to feign injury and be replaced by a better kicker against Leinster.
It wasn’t Maradona’s Hand of God goal against England in the 1986 World Cup, nor was it USA figure skater Tonya Harding’s plot to attack and injure her arch-rival Nancy Kerrigan. It certainly wasn’t Lance Armstrong’s entire career or Dr Eufemiano Fuentes’s 211 blood bags with 35 athletes’ names attached.
The Hendrikse cramp and wink malarkey wasn’t a full-frontal assault on rugby’s regulations and it didn’t fundamentally threaten the innate integrity of the game. But the idea that rugby is a righteous and honest sport was damaged in a way that enhanced viewership figures can’t paper over.
It also excited a lot of people in the wrong kind of way because the act was fraudulent and deceitful.
It is not difficult to understand why the URC preferred to concentrate on the perks attached to the controversial incident than deride the gamesmanship involved, as the latter benefits the former with more attention and engagement.
It is also not hard to understand why the business of rugby leans heavily into figures. Understandably, it swooned at 2022, the year the URC league set a record high of 34.6 million for its broadcast audience. It went weak at the knees in 2023, when the figure rose to 37.2 million. It was better again in the 2023-24 campaign, with 47.7 million.
In the light of players’ wages and vanishing clubs like Wasps, London Irish and Worcester, it is the numbers that move the dial more than anything.
But blurring the lines about what is legal and illegal and what belongs in the game and what doesn’t is important. It is particularly important in a sport like rugby because it is played along the thin boundaries of thuggery and fair play. In that scenario, any kind of erosion of behaviour is problematic.
The URC choosing to see Crampgate as “intrigue” is the modern take. They view gamesmanship as “the rivalry between Ireland and South Africa, which is really bubbling along”.
While the URC might choose to embrace the inflated numbers that rage and distain deliver, there are those who believe rugby must be as much about the unwritten rules and codes that the Sharks shattered as the established laws of the game.
