Who is popular today?

Rugby union has become another sport that seems confused about how to satisfy existing fans while attracting new onesAfter the US invasion of Panama in 1989, it took their army 10 days to persuade the dictator Manuel Noriega to come out of his hiding place in the Apostolic Nunciature of the Holy See. Their soldiers famously surrounded the building with loudspeakers and played, among other things, AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long, Van Halen’s Panama, and Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up day and night, until Noriega lost the will to resist. Five minutes into the half-time interval at Twickenham last Saturday, the thought occurred that they could perhaps have got the job done a lot quicker if, like the RFU, it had hired stadium DJ Tony Perry instead.Which is nothing against Perry, whose act must be just the thing if you’re four tequilas deep on Ocean Beach in Ibiza. Somehow, though, it doesn’t quite go over so well when England are nine points down against Wales and you and your grandfather are trying to talk about whether or not the referee was right to give that scrum penalty while shuffling through the queue for the loos at Twickenham on a freezing cold afternoon in February. Continue reading...