Not a column about rugby

As you may have gleaned from the collective gasp of females and baklas all over the archipelago, and the ensuing crash as they forgot to resume breathing, the national rugby team was in town. (Be warned that I have been reading P.G. Wodehouse and will sound like this for some time.) How is it possible that less than two months ago in this very space we were lamenting the fact that no one seemed to care about their victory at the A5N? And that 14 months ago we were just expressing delight at the fact that a Philippine rugby team exists in a place where rugby is the stuff of poverty porn?

Now you cannot see a screen that is not festooned with their massive pectorals and necks the size of tree trunks. Soon we will have grounds to complain to the MMDA, which is ever vigilant of our right to be shielded from the sight of anyone who is happy to have a penis, that we are being stalked by these ethnic hybrids.

We are inclined to take complete credit for this development, but that would be an exaggeration. For many months we had exclusive coverage rights by default, testing the patience of my editor, who was moved to raise a perfect eyebrow at the presence of rampaging behemoths in the Style pages. The coverage also transformed my blog, temporarily, into the gayest website in the country.

Since we promote reading and rugby, it made perfect sense to post pictures of rugby players reading books. We took inspiration from a blog called Hot Guys Reading Books, to which we had once contributed a photo of a Roger Federer look-alike reading Cormac McCarthy in the queue at Wimbledon. The series began with Matthew Saunders reading Poetry for Dummies. When we had run out of pictures we decided to appeal to the kindness of the rugby players. First we e-mailed Harry Morris, who is a marine biologist; the logic being that someone who knows what a coelenterate is or at the very least can spell “coelenterate” is one who can bridge the ideological gap between Nerd (Us) and Jock (Them). 

“Sure,” said the Morris. “What should I wear?”

“Nothing,” we replied, in case he was a literalist. So he sent us a picture of himself in nearly nothing, reading Anatomy for Dummies. And a second photograph in which he wore more clothes, namely a hat. Legion of decency, please forward complaints to the Morris. 

(Aha, a For Dummies theme emerges. We had read Rugby for Dummies so that we would not be sticking microphones in players’ faces when they arrived at the airport at 4 a.m. asking, “What is rugby?” We happen to take this personally as it means they have never read us.)

Afterwards it was a simple matter of forwarding the photos to another player, Gareth Holgate. The Holgate is an architect; our logic was that someone who knows the difference between baroque and rococo would bridge the ideological gap, etc. The response was a succinct “Is that all?” and a picture of himself that the MMDA would not only tear down, but burn publicly. (Sales of Italian cookbooks and salad bowls, however, would go through the roof.

Recent events have proven that rugby players in underwear is a good idea. In March my friends Rikki and Dorski from GMA-7 mentioned that their new news channel was planning extensive sports coverage, and did we know any possible subjects. That one we can claim as our fault, as Chino Trinidad reminded us last week. “Hey!” he shouted across the near-empty cinema, “Your Volcanoes are getting really popular!”

“They’re not ours,” we shouted back, “but that’s great.” In fact we are no longer covering them, as my editor mentioned in her column some weeks ago. The circumstances of our leaving sounded more interesting than they really were, and there was hair-tearing and teeth-gnashing among the envious. We have no quarrel with the players, nor were we dumb enough to harass, molest or vex people who could extract our spines through our nostrils by flexing a bicep.

Granted, when we saw them last week they reacted in the usual fashion: the silent “Eek, it’s the librarian and I forgot to return the overdue book, she’s going to fine me!” look. Afterwards we spoke of their Shanghai Sevens campaign. At said tournament they had thrashed the defending champion Korea, only to lose to less-fearsome teams and finish seventh. Korea still won.

“What is this snatching defeat from the jaws of victory thing?” we asked. There is no need to mince words with people who love getting their faces smashed onto solid earth while four or five hippopotami do the cha-cha on their vertebrae. “We played badly on Sunday,” said their captain Jake Letts, who does not mince words either.

“After we beat Korea everyone was afraid of us and there may have been some peacocking,” explained the Morris. “You know the love that exists between us and the Kazakh team,” said Justin Coveney, who elucidated in words we cannot quote lest the MMDA confiscate our dictionary.

In any case the Filipino nation now has a mad crush on its rugby team, and Ben Chan has wreaked his genius once again. Amazingly, those underwear billboards were visible for only one week before they succumbed to the Filipino compulsion to act shocked. Credit Ben and the MMDA for the inception of the rugby team into the public consciousness.

If there is a national curling team, and we do not mean competitive hairstylists, you had better get in touch.