Some Rugby Quotes

Taken from a variety of sources

"Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts." - Henry Blaha

"Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city." - Oscar Wilde

"In our country, true teams rarely exist . . . social barriers and personal ambitions have reduced athletes to dissolute cliques or individuals thrown together for mutual profit . . . Yet these rugby players. with their muddied, cracked bodies, are struggling to hold onto a sense of humanity that we in America have lost and are unlikely to regain. The game may only be to move a ball forward on a dirt field, but the task can be accomplished with an unshackled joy and its memories will be a permanent delight. The women and men who play on that rugby field are more alive than too many of us will ever be. The foolish emptiness we think we perceive in their existence is only our own." - Victor Cahn (See e-mail at bottom)

After an All-Blacks surprise loss to the French in the 1999 Rugby World Cup: "The French are predictably unpredictable." - Andrew Mehrtens.

After biting Sean Fitzpatrick's ear: "For an 18-month suspension, I feel I probably should have torn it off. Then at least I could say, 'Look, I've returned to South Africa with the guy's ear.'" - Johan le Roux

"I may not have been very tall or very athletic, but the one thing I did have was the most effective backside in world rugby." - Jim Glennon (1991)

"I prefer rugby to soccer. I enjoy the violence in rugby, except when they start biting each other's ears off." - Elizabeth Taylor (1972)

"I think Brian Moore's gnashers are the kind you get from a DIY shop and hammer in yourself. He is the only player we have who looks like a French forward." - Paul Randall (1994)

"If the game is run properly as a professional game, you do not need 57 old farts running rugby." - Will Carling (1995)

"I'm still an amateur, of course, but I became rugby's first millionaire five years ago." - David Campese (1991)

"On England's new rubber training suit-As you run around Battersea Park in them, looking like a cross between a member of the SAS and Blake's Seven, there is always the lingering fear of arrest." - Brian Moore (1995)

"On female rugby teams - Everybody thinks we should have moustaches and hairy arses, but in fact you could put us all on the cover of Vogue." - Helen Kirk (1987)

On trying to stop Phil Horrocks-Taylor: "Every time I went to tackle him, Horrocks went one way, Taylor went the other, and all I got was the bloody hyphen." - Nick England

"Rugby football is a game I can't claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squalch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench." - P. G. Wodehouse Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

"The lads say my bum is the equivalent of one 'Erica'." - Bill Beaumont

"The only trophy we won this day, was the blood and sweat we left on the pitch.... and it was enough"

"Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist, and preferably play in the pack." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, talking about Rugby (well, that's what I tell everyone)

"A bomb under the West car park at Twickenham on an international day would end fascism in England for a generation." - Philip Toynbee

"A major rugby tour by the British Isles to New Zealand is a cross between a medieval crusade and a prep school outing." - John Hopkins

After England had been humbled by New Zealand in the World Cup semi-final: "I don't know about us not having a Plan B when things went wrong, we looked like we didn't have a Plan A." - Geoff Cooke (1995)

"Don't ask me about emotions in the Welsh dressing room. I'm someone who cries when he watches Little House on the Prairie." - Robert Norster (1994)

"England's coach Jack Powell, an immensely successful businessman, has the acerbic wit of Dorothy Parker and, according to most New Zealanders, a similar knowledge of rugby." - Mark Reason Total Sport (1996)

Following Scotland's accusations of French foul play: "If you can't take a punch, you should play table tennis." - Pierre Berbizier (1995)

"Most Misleading Campaign of 1991: England's rugby World Cup squad, who promoted a scheme called 'Run with the Ball'. Not, unfortunately, among themselves." - Time Out (1991)

On England's new look against Australia: "This looks a good team on paper, let's see how it looks on grass." - Nigel Mellville (1984)

On his son Huw's choice to play for England: "I knew he would never play for Wales ... he's tone deaf." - Vemon Davies (1981)

On playing for Wales at Lansdowne Road, Dublin: "I didn't know what was going on at the start in the swirling wind. The flags were all pointing in different directions and I thought the Irish had starched them just to fool us." - Mike Watkins (1984)

On Wales losing 28-9 against Australia: "No leadership, no ideas. Not even enough imagination to thump someone in the line-up when the ref wasn't looking." - J.P.R. Williams (1984)

Pre-game pep talk before facing England: "Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our houses and they only live in them for a fortnight every 12 months. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English - and that's who you are playing this afternoon." - Phil Bennett (1977)

"Rugby is not like tea, which is good only in England, with English water and English milk. On the contrary, rugby would be better, frankly, if it were made in a Twickenham pot and warmed up in a Pyrenean cauldron." - Dennis LaLanne (1960)

"The French selectors never do anything by halves; for the first international of the season against Ireland they dropped half the three-quarter line." - Nigel Starmer-Smith, BBC TV (1974)

"The job of Welsh coach is like a minor part in a Quentin Tarantino film: you stagger on, you hallucinate, nobody seems to understand a word you say, you throw up, you get shot. Poor old Kevin Bowring has come up through the coaching structure so he knows what it takes ... 15 more players than Wales have at present." - Mark Reason Total Sport (1996)

"The only hope for the England rugby union team is to play it all for laughs. It would pack them in if the public address system at Twickenham was turned up full blast to record the laughs at every inept bit of passing, kicking or tackling. The nation would be in fits ... and on telly the BBC would not need a commentator but just a tape of that Laughing Policeman, turning it loud at the most hilarious bits." - Jim Rivers, letter to The Guardian (1979)

"The relationship between the Welsh and the English is based on trust and understanding. They don't trust us and we don't understand them." - Dudley Wood (1986)

"Tony Ward is the most important rugby player in Ireland. His legs are far more important to his country than even those of Marlene Dietrich were to the film industry. A little hairier, maybe, but a pair of absolute winners." - C.M.H. Gibson, Wales v Ireland match programme (1979)

"We've lost seven of our last eight matches. Only team that we've beaten was Western Samoa. Good job we didn't play the whole of Samoa." - Gareth Davies (1989)

Before the New Zealand v England World Cup semi-final: "Remember that rugby is a team game; all 14 of you make sure you pass the ball to Jonah." - Anon fax to N.Z. team (1995)

"Me? As England's answer to Jonah Lomu? Joanna Lumley, more likely." - Damian Hopley (1995)

On Jonah Lomu: "I've seen a lot people like him, but they weren't playing on the wing." - Colin Meads (1995)

On Jonah Lomu: "The Brent Spar with attitude. A figure who inspires hero worship among even those who think a fly-half is a glass of beer consumed when 'er indoors is looking the other way." - Robert Philip Daily Telegraph (1995)

On Jonah Lomu: "There's no doubt about it, he's a big bastard." - Gavin Hastings (1995)

On Lomu finally turning down offers from League teams: "Jonah Lomu is staying in New Zealand, ending an is-he-or-isn't-he saga which rivalled the trial of OJ. Simpson for unnecessarily protracted tedium." - Paul Wilson The Observer (1995)

"Anyone who doesn't watch rugby league is not a real person. He's a cow's hoof, an ethnic or comes from Melbourne." - John Singleton Australian (1981)

"Anyone who's seen the Wigan [League] players stripped has been faced with the raw truth of the matter... No time for male modelling, and even Princess Di would think twice about getting too close to that lot." - Colin Welland The Observer (1995)