IT seems an exercise in utter futility to be writing a column about something as trivial as rugby, or indeed any sport, on the day after the Manchester bombing.
It makes you wonder why we even consider rugby or sport at all on such a day as we contemplate the idea of all those people, especially the young children and teenagers, having their lives snuffed out in an instant by a deranged individual suffering from the delusion that his demented version of a great religion entitles him to commit mass murder.
Yet to do otherwise, to ignore sport’s part in life, would be to give in to the terrorists and their perverted ideologies. That’s why in spirit with Manchester, we must carry on with our lives as best we can.
Terrorist attacks on sporting events have been all too common in recent years. Since the Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, terrorists have known that attacking sport gets them headlines. The wonder is they have not attacked sport more.
The bombing of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the Boston Marathon bombing four years ago, the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan in 2009, the 2010 horrendous slaughter of 50 fans watching the World Cup in Kampala, Uganda, and the attack on the Tongolese team bus in the same year’s Africa Cup of Nations, and the attack on the Stade de France in 2015 – these and so many other incidents show that sport is always a target.
It is surely only a matter of time before rugby features in that list, and the uniquely friendly nature of the rugby fans of many nations joining together before and after international matches makes them a target – because terrorists don’t do friendship and want to disrupt community feeling to create the division they thrive on.
So what do we do? Just give up and stay at home?
No, we play on, we go to the matches, we see old friends and share drinks and old stories, we enjoy the games and applaud the winners and the losers – that’s the rugby way.
It’s a way that terrorists will never understand, and while we must take more precautions, perhaps with stronger cordons sanitaire around Murrayfield, Twickenham and all the other major stadia across the globe, it would be wrong to stop international rugby because there is a threat from terrorism.
We will all need to be more vigilant because one thing is sure – the terrorists are not going to go away. They will go on bombing and maiming and I really do fear that rugby will be a target one day – though I earnestly hope and pray our glorious game never will be.
In the meantime, though I would never dream of speaking for Scottish rugby, it is incumbent on everyone associated with our sport to remember the dead and express our solidarity with the people who have been injured and the great people of Manchester.
Then we get up and carry on living because that is the way to beat this death cult.
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