I’ve never been a fan of rugby. In fact, for all of my life, I have been quite the opposite. It’s probably a thing of sibling rivalry. My older brothers were not only huge rugby fans, they also played it at school, and played it well. I wanted my own identity, so if they were defined by ‘rugby’, in my childhood mind I had to be defined by ‘not rugby’.
Fast-forward a few years to my varsity days. As a member of the university’s fencing team, that got no financial support from the university, even though we were the top team in the country, bringing home titles, championships and hoards of medals, I was even less motivated to be a fan of rugby. The uni’s rugby team had seemingly endless funds for their tours, and they hardly covered themselves in gold, nor had anywhere near the volume of victories that we did on the fencing team.
The status quo on my feelings for rugby has not changed for 41 years.
The company I work for is one of the official supporters of the Springbok rugby team, and as the in-house social media person, I was given the challenge of live-tweeting the Spingboks’ world cup matches to our followers on Twitter. Challenge Accepted.
Except I don’t own a TV. And I know precious little about rugby. So there’s that. But never one to shy away from a challenge, I decided to give it a go. I had a bank of resources, like a colleague who must be the biggest rugby fan ever, who gave me some pointers on how the scoring works, and who to watch for on ‘our’ team.
I also have a bank of four monitors and my biggest ally in the challenge: I can work Tweetdeck like it’s nobody’s business. So on each match day, I fire up my wall of monitors, type in the hashtag “#RWC2015” and watch carefully as the columns spin with what other people with more knowledge of the game are saying.
Using that information, I put out a credible thread of live tweets, updating our followers on scores; cheering on the Springboks; urging fans to be supportive, and retweeting other tweeters’ insights and analyses of skills, scores, records and milestones that our boys in green and gold achieved – like Habana matching Jonah Lomu’s record for number of tries scored in test matches, or Pollard’s on-point penalty conversions (three months ago, the phrase “penalty conversions” would be absolutely meaningless to me. How things have changed.)
As I was tweeting all this, I started getting Whatsapp messages from friends – fellow social media people – who asked things like “Who is doing your live tweeting?” or “Is that YOU on the brand account? Amaze!” My friends know well my feelings on rugby, and that I don’t have a TV. They were amused, enthralled and, yes, amazed.
But then something happened. Something changed. As each match progressed from start to half-time, to nail-biting finish, I started getting more and more caught up in the excitement of each try scored, each conversion kicked through the H-bars, each milestone achieved. I sat alone in the office on Saturday afternoons cheering and shouting and getting more and more passionate with each passing minute. Yup, it’s true. I kid you not.
With no TV and no people around me, I lost myself to the gees of the game, and our magnificent boys in green and gold. Heart racing, emotions running wild, pride swelling my chest like, well, insert appropriate rugby pride metaphor here – I’m pretty new to rugby jargon, and I haven’t gotten it all down pat, just yet.
After all these years, the real challenge I faced was my disdain for rugby. Work and Tweetdeck have done what my brothers, school and university could never do – turned me into a huge fan. I love it all. The pre-game buildup. The kick-off. The tense moments where we surrender the lead, but claw it back with Pollard’s brilliant kicking and Habana’s endless ocean of tries.
But mostly, I love Welshman Dan Biggar’s nifty little rugby jive before he kicks a conversion over the poles. I could watch that all day, now that people have recorded it and flooded Twitter with his 10 seconds of conversion kick interpretative dance.
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