Beasts of no nation?

When I was eleven or twelve some knacker walked up to me on the street, said something in Cant that I didn't understand, and punched me in the stomach. It was ideal, really: it didn't hurt very much but it allowed me not to feel bad about referring to Travellers as 'knackers', and to lustily join in with every badmouthing of them that I was every privy to. I learned quickly that, despite everyone and their dog understanding the term to be pejorative, it was nearly always completely socially accepted. Usage in front of teachers and other adults would, at worst, be met with a mild frown - the same one you might get if you said 'crap'.

I don't know how many times it took being punched by settled people for me to write that one childish tap in the gut off as part of life, rather than symbolic of the values of an entire ethnicity. I don't know exactly when I grew out of using the term 'knackers' (I suspect it was shamefully recently), but I did.

Last Saturday I read a piece in the Irish Times about the rugby players Denis Leamy and Rory Best. A puff piece, in fact, that had little to do with sport and a lot to do with the fact that the aforementioned are now 'Bushmill Brothers' (there's a remarkably similar piece in The Examiner - it seems that the edict from the marketing people was to use words like 'brothers' and 'bond' prominently, and mention the brand name at least once. Tacky. One can only hope Messrs. Thornley and Lewis got a nice case of whiskey or five for their trouble). But what was jarring was not the thinly-veiled-infomercial nature of the piece, but the part where Rory Best is asked about his BFF's playing style and says he is "a complete knacker on the pitch, as you can imagine."

Does Rory Best mean that Denis Leamy is in the habit of finding old horses on the pitch and turning them into dog food and glue? He would undoubtedly claim that he's using the word in the other sense - that of a person behaving anti-socially or thuggishly. Some say that it's an entirely separate meaning, with no reference to Travellers at all. Bock does (or did, I'll allow for the fact that that post is three years old). But most of the times I've heard people use the phrase "some knacker..." in the middle of an anecdote they will inevitably have to clarify whether they are referring to a scumbag-knacker or, you know, a knacker-knacker. The etymology of any term is a complicated thing, but there seems little doubt that its origins are connected to Travellers. The term is still heavily connected to them, in my experience.

Rory Best has always seemed like a decent enough skin, but he might want to think again about publicly using a term that is highly offensive to an entire culture, even if a lot of people use it freely. They used 'nigger' freely, too, once. If he must use it in the context of Bushmills Brotherly Bonding Banter, then perhaps the Irish Times might think a little more carefully about publishing it, and potentially perpetuating its use among the thousands who will have read that article. Twenty percent would deny citizenship to them, remember, lest we claim that Ireland doesn't have a problem with Travellers. Perhaps they'll redact it later, as they do.

Magnificent Munster

What a match on Saturday! Not exactly a display of scintillatingly skillful rugby (finals rarely are), Munster fought tooth and nail every step of the way to gain a superb 16-13 victory over Toulouse (do they ever make it anything less than nerve-shredding for their fans?).

This was a display of sheer doggedness, passion and intelligent use of the ball against the technically-superior French side, who are undoubtedly the better side man-for-man on paper. Happily, these things rarely count for much against Munster. Toulouse looked massively dangerous whenever they got the ball out wide or into the hands of dangermen like Yves Donguy, Yannick Jauzion and Cedric Heymans, but it was to Munster's enormous credit that this wasn't allowed to happen too often. along with the sheer brilliance of every single one of their front eight, Kiwi backs Doug Howlett and Rua Tipoki were superb - making big hits when necessary and almost combining for a superb try, a slightly forward pass by Tipoki meaning that Howlett's scything run didn't get its just deserts.

Ronan O'Gara was his usual self, kicking for the corners with accuracy and nailing the kicks that needed to be nailed - though he did give some cause for alarm when a couple of his clearing kicks were charged down, luckily with no particularly serious repercussions. He wore his usual expressions of concern and annoyance throughout the match, though I did enjoy the momentary look of boredom while he hung around waiting for a drop goal opportunity that never quite materialised as his forwards slightly over-exerted themselves during an incredibly long phase of pick-and-drive. I have to say, nothing pleased me more than to see O'Gara end the season on such a high, after his miserable experiences in the World Cup last September. I had my doubts at the time that he would ever fully bounce back from that, but I'm delighted to say hat he has entirely proven me wrong. Any personal problems he may or may not have are certainly not manifesting themselves on the pitch any more.

So well done Munster, you've made the country proud again, and given a fitting send-off to your wonderful coach Declan Kidney. If Kidney can instil the same sense of pride in the shirt and courage and patience under pressure into the lads form leinster, Connacht and Ulster then happy times are surely ahead for the national team.

New Zealand to come in the autumn, anyone got tickets?