By Sean
Fagan
Rudyard Kipling - originator of the "muddied oaf"
tag
One of the most common epithets applied to a Rugby player is
that of being a "muddied oaf". Though usually given in a
light-hearted manner, and even worn with pride, it nevertheless
reinforces a stereotype portraying Rugby footballers as lacking
intelligence or manners, and often both. So where did the "muddied
oafs" appellation originate? This story begins in what is today
South Africa. By the first week of 1902 the Boer War had been
raging for three years. In that time less than 100,000 Afrikaners
were continuing to prove themselves too thorny for 500,000 British
and colonial troops. Dismayed at this apparent flagging in the
Empire's military power and expertise, English poet Rudyard Kipling
composed a new poem, first published in The Times (London)
and The New York Tribune. Entitled "The
Islanders", Kipling's purport was that his words would
primarily serve to the people of Britain a denunciation of not only
the nation's now obvious unpreparedness for war, but the
accompanying negative impact of the nation's undue devotion to
sport. It was meant to strike the nation into action (primarily
through military training and conscription). Within two months the
poem had been reproduced in most major newspapers and journals
throughout the English speaking world. Initially, at least,
Kipling's poem missed its mark. Intended as a thrilling trumpet
call to duty, to fire the Empire's military ardour, it instead
raised a howl of disapproval - especially from the sporting world.
At the centre of the controversy were two lines, and a now
well-familiar phrase…
"Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye
contented your souls With the flannelled fools at the
wicket or the muddied oafs at the goals."
Kipling was arguing that England was indifferent to the war
effort. That the Empire had successfully called on its colonies to
provide the necessary man-power, and that, taking comfort from
this, England returned to indulging itself in what appeared to be
its primary concern - sport. English author and journalist George
Orwell wrote (in 1942):
"Few people who have criticised England from the
inside have said bitterer things about her than this gutter
patriot…That phrase about 'the flannelled fools at the wicket and
the muddied oafs at the goal' sticks like an arrow to this
day."
In the weeks after "The Islanders" first appeared, many
commentators and letter-writers took Kipling to task:
"His attack upon the juggernaut of athleticism is
not without a measure of justification. The interest displayed by
the public in the result of an Australian [v England cricket] test
match, or an international football [Rugby] contest, is certainly
out of all proportion to the importance of the matter at stake [the
war]. A second Majuba, such as we experienced at
Tweefontein, is dismissed in the bill of contents of leading
metropolitan newspapers with a line in small type merely referring
to 'a British reverse in South Africa,' but the streets are filled
with placards about athletic contests, in the largest possible
head-lines. Nevertheless, the general verdict is that Mr.
Kipling was not only ill-advised, but unjust when he scornfully
referred to 'the flannelled fools at the wicket, or the muddied
oafs at the goals."
Another wrote:
"Cricketers, footballers, and the athletic world in
general are righteously indignant at the unwarranted sneer which in
his latest poem, 'The Islanders,' Rudyard Kipling has indulged in
at their expense. Whilst it may be asserted that the
attention given to sport is out of proportion to its real value,
yet for Rudyard Kipling to write of cricketers as 'the flannelled
fools at the wicket' and describe footballers as 'the muddied oafs
at the goals' is a shocking misuse of invective, and altogether
unworthy of one who has many claims to being crowned Poet Laureate
of the Empire. … it is worse than foolishness for Rudyard
Kipling to seek to find in the Englishman's well-known love of
sport the reason of the nation's lack of preparedness for
war."
The famous cricketer and soccer player CB Fry (who also played
Rugby for Oxford University, Blackheath and the Barbarians) wrote
in London's Daily Express at the time:
"Cricketers may be flannelled but they are not
fools. Footballers are often muddied but they are decidedly not
oafs. It is an hallucination of Mr Kipling's heated mind that games
and the public interest in them have anything to do with the civil
military short comings of the nation."
Kipling himself soon arrived in South Africa, where he
encountered many military men who were also proud footballers and
cricketers. It was there that he contended that the poem's target
was not the players, but the spectators. Speaking in Capetown,
Kipling said:
"Seriously, I know how many athletes have shown
themselves rattling good soldiers during the present war. As a
matter of fact I never meant to refer to actual athletes at all,
but merely to the large number of people who spend all their spare
time looking at other men playing. However, I felt that if I did
not exaggerate my protest would pass unheeded, and the very fact
that I made so many people angry shows there was truth in what I
said."
Surrey Rugby Club's JH Kipling - a cousin of Rudyard, he was a
prominent player of the late 1890s, declining a place in the 1899
Lions that visited Australia. Kipling's target was not the men who
played the game, but the raucous-voiced individual on the terraces
and grandstands who had never handled a 'live' football in his
life. It was a poetical taunt of souls content with gazing at "the
flannelled fools at the wicket and the muddied oafs at the goal".
However, nothing Kipling could say or write could ever "un-ring the
bell" as it were. Whether intentional or not, the disparaging
connotation that footballers - especially Rugby footballers - are
all oafs, stuck. Walter Camp - the father of American football -
spoke in 1908 at a dinner at the New York Athletic Club:
"That poem hit the English 'footers' hard. One of
the English 'footers'…told me how he was walking one day to his
club in football clothes when a newspaper boy hailed him. "Paper,
sir?" The footballer walked on, whereupon the boy yelled out after
him: "Yah, ye muddied oaf; Like as not ye can't even
read!""
Today's Rugby players, old and young alike, wear the "muddied
oaf" as a badge of honour. Now you "muddied oafs" are armed with
new-found knowledge of Kipling, poetry and war, go forth and regale
the world - prove Kipling wrong!
About the Author - Sean Fagan is a
sports historian and writer based in Australia. He has written
several books including 'The Life and Times of Dally Messenger' and
'The First Lions of Rugby', details of which can be found on
www.SaintsAndHeathens.com
The World Rugby Museum would like to thank Sean for contributing
this article.
