Rugby players cash in on books

The Rugby World Cup has come and passed. New Zealand slayed the dragon, Quade Cooper was average, France are still the most predictably unpredictable team on earth and Peter de Villiers said it was the end of the road, then changed his mind.

One would think with the tournament now out the way, the rugby media machine in the Southern Hemisphere at least would slumber from November to the start of February, but no, respite shall not be had even in the height of cricket season.

The Rugby World Cup meant the end for some players, the beginnings for others and more of the same from everyone else. What it also provided was an excuse for rugby autobiographies to hit the bookshelves and e-stores. With the World Cup gone, players are cashing in. While some will buy Butch James’ book Butch because they want to know everything about the current Lions flyhalf, others will just be there to read about what happened in New Zealand.

Victor Matfield would offer a larger fan base to a publisher, hence there has been more of an effort to promote his book. Having a man like that write Victor: My Journey opens up new readers to retailers, and while I’m not saying rugby fans don’t read, rugby isn’t normally associated with a good Jonathan Franzen novel on a Sunday.

With Matfield, and John Smit’s magnum opus Captain in the Cauldron: The John Smit Story, both players had earned the right I guess, given their long careers, to say something. But Pierre Spies? His star has dimmed in recent times, with the World Cup did not help resurrect it. At only 26, his career is close to the halfway mark, so the timing of More than Rugby speaks more to market forces then a deep-rooted desire to enlighten the masses.

South Africans aren’t the only ones getting involved. Jonny Wilkinson has just released Johnny, David Pocock released Openside at the age of 23, former England skipper Lewis Moody penned Lewis Moody: My Life in Rugby and Chris Ashton, who loves to fly over try lines like a swan on steroids, spat out Splashdown: The Story of My World Cup Year (are you kidding me?). Jake White did it after the 2007 Springbok victory in France with In Black and White: The Jake White Story (another pun-tastic title), so perhaps we should have seen the current tsunami coming.

It is understandable that players, with a limited time-span to make a career, seek to profit from their success. But it’s difficult not to be a bit cynical when players who haven’t even reached the middle of their career, let alone the end, release material for the sake of someone else being willing to buy it. It’s a free-for-all, and while there are nuggets of truth and originality between all the nonsense, they are as difficult to find as players who actually have something exciting to say instead of the cliche-addled probots (to borrow a word from cricketwithballs.com) that feed the media machine throughout the season.

It’s just another brick in the foundation of celebrity that has come to surround rugby in this country. The players are being elevated to the status of demigods, with the hype becoming a self-perpetuating cycle where it’s all rugby all the time. Sometimes I wonder if such obsession is healthy for the game, not its bank balance.

A break however would be appreciated, even if just a little one.