PROJECT: FINAL PIECE

PROJECT: Final Piece idea

For my final piece, having researched the many methods of media that is appropriate for rugby including newspapers, video and images i have decided to attempt to combine all of these and create a montage using Photoshop and then putting the image along with a classical rugby tour song, Sloop John B by The Beach Boys.

I am going to print off the piece and place it onto an A3 canvas, creating a centre piece that can be displayed on a wall, whether being at home or in a rugby club itself.

PROJECT: A sense of community

Linking to team mates and team spirit is the sense of community that can be achieved through rugby. Examples can be found from local school based projects all the way up to aiding global issues. As long as I can remember I have read literature handed out in magazine form from local authorities attempts through various sports, particularly rugby, in engaging children and teaching them the advantages of the game. This incorporates school teachers, parents and coaches helping giving children something to enjoy after the school day. Rugby is ideal for this, tag rugby especially, there’s running, catching and talking which are all part of this, things that children quite obviously enjoy. 

I attach here a short video not simply on rugby, but what rugby is a part of with regards to SportWales.

On a larger scale, there is a famous example of rugby being used as a device for uniting a country dogged by apartheid and racial conflict.

South Africa hosted the 1995 World Cup, with Nelson Mandela recently being released after 29 years imprisonment on Robben Island, and had been elected Primeminister. However, there were still great problems within the country, but during the 1995 World Cup competition these problems seemed to be disbanded as the country ended up victorious culminating in the legendary image of Mandela himself presenting the victorious captain with the trophy. An incredible moment in that nation’s history, it was during this time they were knicknamed the ‘Rainbow Nation’.  

I have also attached an article on the topic.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/books/3485199/Story-of-Nelson-Mandela-and-1995-Rugby-World-Cup-favourite-for-sports-book-award-Rugby-Union.html

PROJECT: What/Where/Who is my sense of place?

When first assigned this project for ICT and Visual Communications to identify a sense of place, I immediately thought of rugby as that place.

Rugby connotes many strong views, some can be stereotypical, for instance that of a group of testosterone fuelled men, uneducated and looking for a fight, and although I’m very aware that this is in fact the case for many rugby players, this I cannot, unfortunately, deny, for me there is so much more to it than that. It is going to be challenging to put rugby across as a sense of place, it is simply a game after all, no different to snooker, polo or lacrosse, or is it? I think it is, I’m going to try and explain why by showing it as my sense of place.

As a means of research for the project I sketched out a mind map of the core benefits found in rugby. I felt that this was an appropriate way to make note of the many aspects and advantages offered by the game and more effective than writing a paragraph and listing these topics.

I have decided to look at three topics in particular that I believe are the most important and can best be attached to a sense of place in the game of rugby; these are teammates, family and glory. These aspects are key and can be easily linked to many other benefits of rugby.

PROJECT: Team Spirit/Team Mates

There is an adage that human beings have a natural need to belong, to want to be apart of something. It is simply nature. I found my belonging in rugby, a game for all shapes and sizes, a doctor or a plumber, an academic or a dropout. The game offers a gift to unite all that become team mates, a physical, combative game by nature, it has an ability to develop a team spirit like no other sport. This of course bolstered by the reputation that off the pitch, equally as much as on it, rugby players stick together and look after one another.

I have attached a promo video made for the University’s Varsity match earlier on in the season. I helped produce the video and played in the game itself.

The video shows our team members tackling players wearing the opposition’s shirt (our own players in a manufactured shirt I may add) within the confines of our university, our sponsors establishment and other venues that mean a lot to our team. It shows great team spirit and everything about the video is about the team that we represent week in and week out.

Although tongue in cheek and created with the humour widely associated with the game of rugby, this video was filmed by several of the first teams players, many of whom had only known each other a couple of months, but again, i refer to this uncanny ability for rugby to unite its own.

Camaraderie plays a strong in being able to identify oneself with a sense of place. Referring back to natures need of wanting to belong to something.

It has had over 600 views on YouTube, a large number considering the relative unknowness of the matchitself. This highlights what an effective video making is on rugby, this video encompasses various traits of the game including humour, passion and the physicality of rugby.

The video is filmed in the context of many found in relation to rugby on YouTube. The music accompanying the film is used on several reoccurring videos found on YouTube the ‘BOOM’ part relating often to big tackling or ‘hits’ common in the game of rugby. The ‘big hits’ is a common feature of interest in the game, without going into specific players but many do base their reputation on tackling, so videos of this nature are often found on renowned rugby site RugbyDump.com. Here is an example of the type of video on YouTube.

PROJECT: Glory

I do not want to approach this topic with the ethos that the winning is everything because it really is not. Of course it plays an important part and seeing as the top level of rugby these days is essentially a business, winning equals money therefore winning is everything. However, I am going to look at glory from a supporters perspective, and to support this I believe the best means of explaining  this is through a video I created.

The footage is taken by myself at the big screen located outside the Cardiff Civic Centre on the final day of the 2012 Six Nations Tournament, an annual northern hemisphere tournament which my team, Wales, won with a clean sweep this year. The footage shows the dying minutes of the game, you can see on the screen a crowd of seventy-four thousand fans cheering their country on, but that day the was an estimated quarter of a million Welsh supporters in Cardiff, and the majority were stood behind me watching the screen too.

The celebrations in reaction to the Welsh teams glory that day, through this video, is a magnificent way to illustrate why rugby gives me such a huge feeling of place and belonging.

The use of movies is a common method in which to document rugby, any aspect of the game can be found in video form on websites such as YouTube or the rugby specific site ‘RugbyDump’.

The glory experienced by the players that do, who worked so hard to achieve success was shared by loyal fans of Welsh rugby, fans that hold a sense of place in the game, with Cardiff being the spiritual home of this place. In Wales, rugby is the national sport, it is more like a religion than something to casually have an interest in, and only through having such strong feelings as this, as I do, can one experience such euphoria as the video shows.

Cardiff on match day, the home of Welsh rugby.

Wales has a long tradition in the game of rugby, being a Welshman this could help define why my sense of place is in the game itself. Images of the world renowned Millenium Stadium and crowd shots from match day like the ones above can show that many appreciate that sense of place.

PROJECT: An introduction to more than a game...

I believe a sense of place is a personal fortress, so I would like to explain briefly why rugby, for me is that place.

I began playing at eight years old for my local team, my brother also played for this team in a higher age bracket, and my father was an avid rugby fan. At such an age you are only exposed to the children that you see day in day out at school, but all of a sudden on Sunday mornings you find yourself on (usually) cold, dismal and wet days with a bunch of others of your age from schools you haven’t even heard of, some as far as fifteen miles away, light years for an eight year old! This is how lifelong friendships are created.

But every Sunday this prevailed, dad’s would surround the pitches, catching up with one another on a weekly basis , discussions on rugby, the government and cars were all familiar topics. The same applied for them, once a week they could look forward to seeing other fathers to catch up  and put the world to its rights, and before long the mothers were involved too, screams at the opposition of “get off my boy” were often heard. A family day out on muddy pitches and cups of tea gone cold.

This went on for several years into adolescence. A transition would take place, all of a sudden the same group of boys brought together by their fathers were no longer playing this simply to see your pals, competitiveness was introduced by mother nature, a drive to win, get one over on the opposition and hold bragging rights over the region, made all the more sweet because you were doing it with your friends. The friends you would never have known if not for this game called rugby.

That is but a brief history of how my rugby life began, and I know it is very similar for people globally.