Where Dave proves his masculinity by devolving intellectually

Rugby can be an absolutely fantastic game. It can also be dangerous, angry and boring to watch but I'm not really going to worry about this. It is good.

There are a number of reasons for this blanket statement. I choose to ignore most of them and settle on the only one I can be bothered talking about. Firstly, it provides 'men' (and an increasing number of women) to exhibit signs of traditional masculinity. Such as violence, immunity to pain or common sense and cheating without getting caught. Manland never used to be a nice place to be - no-one talked about their emotions or how they yearned to be 'unzipped from the inside' (Damn you Dr. Phil!). Now we have to talk about how we 'feel' and what we 'want' and look at developing 'communication lines' between adversaries. Such as man and woman.

The rugby field allows us to get away from the intellectualisation of the modern world. We lose our more savvy elements as blood gets diverted from both the brain and the penis to heal our welts or spurt out in fantastic quantities when someone's sprig punctures our aorta. Case in point - during the game today our halfback dislocated his shoulder but came back on and played as a loose forward while he still had a dislocated shoulder!

We could have won had the forwards and backs done anything resembling their jobs today. But I'm happy in the knowledge that my cuts and bruises and resprained thumb symbolize that animal masculinity you can detect just below the surface of Dave.