French Rugby Referees Confess To Profound Hatred Of Rugby

 –NZ Herald—

Garces, Poite and Raynal, the 3 French rugby referees in charge of the big matches on the British and Irish Lions tour of NZ have today all confessed to a profound and deeply-seated hatred of all things rugby.

The trio, who were raised together in a French Convent for Unreasonably Vindictive Children, made a childhood pact to punish the “hugely masculine and devilishly handsome boys” who never picked them to play on any lunchtime touch rugby teams due to the trio’s psychotically vicious anti-social tendencies. “If we cannot inspire love then instead we will inspire great hate” said the anorexic Poite as he slowly pulled the wings from a crippled butterfly on the table before him.

“Our senior year pact was to devote our lives to reaching the pinnacle of the refereeing profession and then punish those far more athletically talented than us by refusing to let any scrum take place” continued Garces as he smiled distantly at the crying butterfly on the table as it drew its last tearful breaths. “Well, not every scrum” chimed in Raynal, as he abruptly bashed the butterfly to death with a baguette. “That would draw suspicion towards our pact. So therefore we only penalise 2 out of every 3 scrums prior to engagement.”

“Scrum? Not under my watch. Penalty!”
Left-to-right, messrs Poite, Garces and Raynal at their Convent for Unreasonably Vindictive Children.

“For a while I wanted to be a traffic warden” admitted Garces. “That way I could look around all day for cars with rugby bumper stickers and ticket them appropriately. However Raynal and I were swayed by Poite and the pact. Now, we all get to do what we love to hate. I mean, we get to do what we love doing by hating what we love to hate.”

“In my senior year at the Convent I wanted to be the Pope” chimed in Poite “but the other senior boys teased me mercilessly so one day, in a pique of anger, I tearfully tore off my cassock and stormed outside into the pouring rain in my undershorts and a sister, there for an under 10’s match, about to get underway with no referee, saw me in my undershorts and mistook me for a rugger person and handed me a whistle and asked me to officiate the match. I was so furious at the bullying in the vestibule from the other boys that I just whistled up everything and unbelievably the sister thought I was some sort of rugby rules expert. Ever since I’ve just been making it up as I went along, learning as I go. Still no idea about scrums though. I just choose a side beforehand, follow the 2 out of every 3 to be penalized mantra, and try to blow the whistle as quickly as possible, so as to appear decisive and authoritative.”

“We the French deliver scrum penalties from upon high, as a sort of artful embellishment” continued Garces, as he dabbed the last coloured splays of butterfly wing gore from the corners of his mouth. “A splash here, a dash there, it’s Monet, it’s Manet, it’s a still life, it’s French, it’s Art.”