Moments in Sports: The 99 Call (a/k/a "Rugby as Warfare")

[Webster]

Rugby Is Slaughter - TV Tropes

Rugby is one of several games that Americans, for the most part, do not get. (It's OK, people who get rugby often do not get American football.) While the two games look broadly similar there are three facts about rugby that tend to stand out: …

tvtropes.org

Rugby, most of the time, is a matter of Non-Lethal Warfare, especially in internationals. It helps that most of the time the principal teams in the world's rugby élite are from old allies, or from nations who have not been to war with each other for centuries (exs. France and England). however, there is an exception. The British Lions' 1974 tour of South Africa became effectively the third Boer War, played out on the rugby fields. The animosity between the two teams reached a peak where the Lions' captain, fed up with the over-robust play of the Springboeks, devised the Call Ninety-Nine. This meant "forget the game. Run at the nearest South African player, and punch him." The reasoning for this was that if all thirty players started a fistfight at once, the referee would not know who to send off and would lose control of the game for just long enough for the Lions to make a point about dirty play by the Boers. The Battle of Ellis Park has gone down in rugby history.