This is an easy issue to wrestle with, give the boys a break

Playing the joker: Naz Kheir (left) and Alex Roth get a hold of Chris Ashton as the squad lap up the Mad Midget Weekender
13 April 2012

Where do you stand on dwarf tossing? How about 'leprechaun bar wars'? Or, say, midget jelly wrestling?

Understandably, it's a question that is vexing sport's moral minority, as pictures emerged on Facebook yesterday of the England rugby team enjoying a night out at the Altitude Bar in Queenstown, New Zealand.

There, it seems, the boys celebrated last Saturday's narrow win over Argentina with a night of dropsical intemperance and fraternisation with little people, at an event advertised as the 'Mad Midget Weekender'.

There are some good pics on the net. If you go hunting, you can see Dan Cole and Steve Thompson scrumming down with a couple of little people.
(I'm not talking about Richard Wigglesworth and Ben Youngs). You can also see them posing for photos with some attractive ladies and comparing beards with other hirsute gentlemen.

Other pictures from the Mad Midget Weekender show the advertised 'mad midgets' wrestling well-proportioned flopsies in jelly-filled paddling pools, doing bungee races through the bar and wearing a variety of amusing hats.

Run that all through the wringer and what do you get?

This: a sensational story claiming that England players, including the captain Mike Tindall, were running amok: tossing dwarves, playing Party Hands with loose blondes and generally going apes**t on the sauce.

The truth, of course, is that England were merely Having A Good Time. Rich Deane, the manager of the Altitude Bar, sought to explain.

He wrote on Facebook: "Firstly: There was no dwarf throwing - that's just not cool!

"Secondly: There was no scandal by any of the English Rugby Players that we saw! They were great lads, not throwing the midgets, it was all light hearted good humored fun! This is the tabloids taking photos out of context and telling silly stories." [sic] Sigh. If only our constipated public morality were that simple.

As far as I can see, there are three main objections to the England players' night out.

First, it is argued that it does not behove an international sportsman to hang out in an environment which could be interpreted as exploitative of dwarves, midgets or leprechauns.

National bans on dwarf-tossing have been upheld by the UN human rights committee as necessary "in order to protect public order and considerations of human dignity"; and the activity is even banned in France - which is really something, coming from the nation that invented ortolan-eating.

But there was, apparently, no dwarf-tossing at the Altitude Bar. And to say that any form of midget show is ­automatically demeaning is what I call the Harriet Harman defence: whether the little people are enjoying their chosen work is neither here nor there because someone, somewhere, might feel bad.

A second, slightly more convincing argument is it's a bit bloody rich for England to go out and enjoy themselves off the field, when they stank the place out against Argentina.

It would help England followers digest the po-faced performances on the field if they at least seemed somehow in keeping with the mood behind the scenes: serious, boring, dully purposeful.

But that, too, is fairly specious. In fact, the only argument that I can see holding any weight is that drinking is generally quite bad for your performance on the pitch. If England struggle against Georgia, Romania or Scotland, there is now a stick with which they can be beaten: they weren't taking their sports nutrition seriously.

And yet. All of this is really just pither in the wind. England went out and had a laugh. It was vaguely politically incorrect but so what? None of them ended up pulling an Andy Powell: p***ing blood out of their head on the floor of a Walkabout, or driving a golf buggy down a motorway. They have a job to do against Georgia on Sunday, and if they do it, what difference did any of this nonsense really make?

Sportsmen are men and men like to get drunk and act dumb. Do we really want to turn rugby players into football players? Living like fugitives from the press, mistrusting everyone and sitting behind red velvet ropes in nightclubs? Let boys be boys and let's concentrate on the stuff that matters: the rugby.

Follow me on Twitter @dgjones

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