The Rugby!!!

I can't believe I want to talk about sport on my very cultural blog. Don't get me wrong I've done my bit with rugby, tennis, sailing, squash and surfing with a lot in between but the national obsession with winning or in this case losing to determine whether you get out of bed in the morning has somehow passed me by. However this time it seems different. To be number one in the rugby playing world for four years and go out in the quarter finals is bad enough, but the unfolding of the game itself was somehow tragic and beautiful and at the end numbing (I can't believe I'm saying this!). Strangely I can liken it to 9/11 (of course I do know it's not as important) which although tragic was absolutely beautiful in concept and in the way those massive symbols of power meekly accepted the planes and their own destruction.
Also the American people, confident in their impregnability, for the first time felt what it was like to be vunerable and have lashed out since at anyone and everyone they think is to blame.
So the coach will go and some of the players will go and the management will be shaken up and probably there will be more family violence and two weeks later people will wake up and realise that it really doesn't matter.
But the pyschology of putting your dreams into a national sports team fascinates me. It's almost as if it is fulfilling the old warrior need of vanquishing a foe which is not available anymore. That works of course when you win but then you lose and whamo!
The game was beautiful though with passion and courage, exaltation and heartbreak, and although I felt I had gone through a wringer I feel that I have gained something.
It would make a good abstract collage!