Festive fun as Henson overcomes Fearns KO

An escalating class-action lawsuit over concussion, a European Champions Cup bent out of shape by the pandemic, a low-rent bunch of administrators who disappeared up their own contradictions long before arriving at their current state of paralysis: truly, the Ghost of Christmas Rubbish is having its malevolent way with us.

- CHRIS HEWETT

If the mighty Dickens, who knew and understood “bleak” when he saw it, had summoned all his imaginative and descriptive powers, he might just have found a way of concocting a happy conclusion to this sorry saga of apathy, greed and vicious circumstance. But Dickens isn’t with us, alas. We have World Rugby instead. Alas.

Yet there is only so much doom and gloom a single sport can take, so to hell with it. Let’s remember some of the good times – or at least, the less bad times – by inviting the Ghost of Christmas Past to spin a seasonal yarn or two.

Of course, not everyone shares the same definition of “good times”. Take James Haskell as an example. Only 99.999 per cent of the union community fell about laughing when the England flanker, playing club rugby in Japan, had to turn out for the Ricoh Black Rams on Christmas Day in 2011 – an away game involving travel on Christmas Eve and a bus home straight after the final whistle. The 0.001 per cent who didn’t think it hilarious? That would be James Haskell and his vanity mirror.