The Rassie-inspired triumph of Brit hysteria

There was a time when I would venture into the swamp that is the comments sections placed, appropriately, under stories. I wanted to see what people were saying, test the level of discourse.

What I found, more often than not, was that the level of discussion is measured by the float in a toilet cistern that stops it overflowing. It goes down when flushed, taking the badness away before filling up again to give them another chance. And, so, I stopped reading the comments. It was a place for shouty people, a trapdoor for cowards and done’er-wells to lurk under before popping up behind you to whack the back of your ankles with a ruler.

You need a shower after being down there for a spell. Spend too long and you find yourself getting ready to join in the shouting and looking for a ruler to dish out slaps. It’s a land of mob fever.

Over the last few weeks I started going back, mainly to check out what was being said on the rugby stories of the papers up north. Yup, nothing had changed. They were, it must be said, egged on by what was written by some of the journalists, but it stuck to the themes I wrote about last week, how South Africans are whingers, Neanderthals and one-dimensional.

England winning by one point at home through scoring three tries was a “triumph for rugby”, which, again, ignores the beauty and unpredictability of a game with different styles and tactics, playing to their strengths at different times in their evolution as a team.

In the Guardian, a comment spoke of “A victory for the game of rugby. And for humanity more generally.” They really do not like Rassie Erasmus.

Another wrote: “Excellent, nothing better than a butt hurt Bok unless it is a whinging Aussie.

“I’m off to see if there are a few of those on the Wales piece.”

Professional trolls. While some of the British writers have shown a semblance of balance, even the best of them has been caught up in the hype of Saturday’s win over the Springboks.

“We’re gonna win the cup! We’re gonna win the cup!” “Courageous, clinical, canny — hallmarks of ‘New England’,” claimed the Times on Monday. “England’s attacking intent leading way for northern powerhouses,” wrote the Guardian.

The Telegraph has a deputy rugby correspondent in Daniel Schofield who does not like the Springboks. “The Springboks have become a byword for cynicism and paranoia — they have treated rugby with contempt,” he wrote before the match.

He also managed to make up an entire piece based on a tweet sent by Erasmus that was headlined “Rassie Erasmus warned –‘Dare to show up at Twickenham and your ban will be increased’.” No actual sources, but Schofield was said to “understand” that was what would happen.

The hype of the win carried on through Sunday but by Monday, England coach Eddie Jones tried to calm them down. “You think about SA, they have been on the road away from home for at least 18 weeks. That presents challenges. There may be some mental fatigue that gets exacerbated by those conditions,” Jones said.

But, Eddie, the North is rising again! We beat the All Blacks! We beat Australia! We beat SA! We, er, beat Argentina, Tonga and Fiji Jones had hyped the hell out of the match ahead of time, telling fibs about how the Boks had called the England pack “weak”, which had Siya Kolisi scratching his head.

Jones released his new book on Thursday, with the Telegraph carrying an exclusive excerpt and the Times catching up with a story about how Jones did not think Maro Itoje was a future England captain. They sent Itoje to acting classes to develop his communication skills. That must have helped him after he tried to claim he had been fouled after placing his knee on Damian de Allende’s neck in the Lions series.

Jones knows the hype did its trick in helping England beat the Springboks. It takes more than hype to win a World Cup. It takes a slow burn of a build-up, a need to look inwards at what you have and not what you hope to have. It takes more than the shouting of those in the comments section and big headlines. The World Cup is two years away. Jones knows this is not yet done.