Well I did it, ladies and gentlemen. Despite my misgivings I bit the bullet and went to watch Malta take on Croatia at the Hibernians ground last Saturday.

Before I went, I wrote about my belief that you are either a rugby man or a football man. And nothing I saw on Saturday has done anything to change my opinion.

As a sport, rugby is entertaining. It would be unfair of me to say otherwise. But it just doesn’t have the flow of football. It is stop-start on a pretty constant basis and, as such, I found it hard to get into.

Maybe this was a particularly fragmented match. Maybe it was because Malta didn’t reach the heights that I had been told they were generally reaching. But, whatever the reason, it just didn’t get the blood flowing like a football match does.

But wait. Before I am deluged with hate mail for not liking rugby, I have plenty of positive things to say too.

The thing that struck me the most was the atmosphere. Absolutely fantastic. Football fans can certainly take a leaf out of rugby’s book when it comes to generating a buzz.

Despite the limited size of the crowd, about 3,000 by my reckoning, the atmosphere was superb. A real party occasion. There was an element of American football about the event with loud music and DJs winding up the crowd prior to kick-off but, and this is the truth, it worked and worked well.

What the Malta rugby authorities have succeeded in doing is creating an overall package that is attracting people who normally wouldn’t think twice about attending a sporting event.

The stand was full of men and women who would probably otherwise have been out shopping or sipping a capuccino somewhere substantially warmer.

Yet, thanks to the friendly, family and carnival atmosphere, these people have been enticed into watching a sport they know little about – something that was evidenced by the amount of people turning round and asking each other about the rules on a pretty constant basis.

But despite the lack of knowledge of rugby, it didn’t seem to stop just about everybody who was there – myself included – from enjoying the occasion.

As I said, football will always be my number one love and nothing will ever change that. But I am now extremely sure that rugby is equally deserving of massive support.

Would it go again to watch another game? Most probably. Would I recommend others give it a try? Absolutely.

Top marks to rugby for showing the rest of our local sports how it should be done…

Arsene Wenger

Normally I have a lot of respect for Arsene Wenger. He is an astute manager, a great tactician and pretty much an all round nice guy.

Which makes his tantrum last Sunday all the more out of character.

Apparently the pitch-side scuffle between him and West Ham boss Alan Pardew came about after Pardew celebrated his side’s winner in over-zealous fashion.

The two managers were pushing and shouting at each other and had to be separated by the fourth official. And there were no conciliatory handshakes at the end either.

Pardew has since apologised for perhaps being a little too passionate in his celebrations but, personally, I don’t see why he should have to.

As a manager he has been under severe pressure over the past couple of months and it is only to be expected that an 88th minute winner against a team of the stature of Arsenal is going to provoke wild joy.

No matter what Pardew did or said, Wenger should have realised just what the win meant to West Ham and should have taken his celebrations in that context.

The two men look likely to face FA charges for their actions now, and that doesn’t really surprise me. Managers should set an example for the fans and fighting like five-year-olds on the touchline is the sort of behaviour that will cause unrest in the stands. On that basis they were both in the wrong.

However, I still can’t help feel Arsene was the real guilty party. A sore loser who just couldn’t comprehend how important a win was for a manager who was set to lose his job a couple of weeks ago.

And, on that basis, my respect for Wenger has gone down a notch or two.

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