Pligget

For the last month or so I've been receiving daily emails covering news, sport, arts, etc. from the Daily Telegraph, largely because the Guardian started charging a subscription fee for theirs and the Torygraph's are free. They serve adequately as a guide to the headlines (especially since my car radio's out of action at the mo), and have had good coverage of the rugby, but they've lacked any sort of entertainment value - until now.

This hilarious piece, presumably printed in the Sunday Telegraph, comparing the awfulness of football (and the oiks who support it) with the inspiration of rugby may even have been written as a serious piece, but it's such an eloquent exposition of blinkered, elitist bigotry that I'd prefer to think William Langley was just taking the piss. You really have to read the whole thing, but just to give you the incentive to click on that link, I'll extract a couple of early gems:

Football ... [is] a game at which we are embarrassingly second-rate and getting worse, played by men of fathomless vanity, stupidity and selfishness, and supported by some of the ugliest and nastiest individuals on earth.

[About rugby:] The game's extraordinarily high standards of sportsmanship, discipline, camaraderie and valour survive, indeed thrive, because only a relative few are ever likely to aspire to them. These are unfashionable values. They may be burnished on the field of play, but they are forged elsewhere; around the hearths of solid, traditional families, and in those schools - mostly, but far from exclusively, in the independent sector - where rugby is cherished.

I'm sorry, it's no good - I can't single out any more paragraphs because they're all solid gold. Oh, alright then - just one more:

There is a general crisis of sport in schools for which only the independent sector currently offers anything like a remedy. An astounding two-thirds of medals won by Britons at the 2000 Sydney Olympics went to privately-educated athletes. Strip out (with no disrespect intended) our black sprinters from the inner-city comprehensives, and the public schools have a virtual monopoly on sporting excellence.

Isn't that priceless? Go on - read the whole thing. It'll brighten your day.

Absolutely bang on, sir.