Hurricanes flanker Du’Plessis Kirifi has revealed he had unsavoury comments yelled at him from the stands following Saturday night’s victory over the Waratahs.
Kirifi was caught on camera flipping off members of the 11,000-strong crowd after the come-from-behind 22-18 win and some would have unsurprisingly jumped to conclusions about his behaviour.
Those critics will now have to eat their words following Kirifi’s revelations about his entirely justifiable behaviour – but should it really matter whether or not Kirifi copped abuse in the lead-up to him flipping the bird?
Rugby has long lagged behind other sports when it comes to allowing the individual involved to let their personalities shine through.
Few would disagree that Kirifi was right to feel frustrated after what went down at Leichhardt Oval.
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Kirifi had a very good reason to throw caution to the wind and flip off some ill-behaving crowd members (to call them fans would be doing the game a disservice) at Leichhardt Oval.
In his Instagram post, Kirifi has said, “If I had my time again I’d definitely act in a different way” – but it would be wrong to quell the Hurricane’s passion, especially given the words he allegedly received from the crowd.
And what if there hadn’t been unsavoury comments? What if the truth had never come out and Kirifi had just taken umbrage with some particularly wordy Waratahs fans?
Well, so what?
There was nothing wrong with Andrew Mehrtens flipping off the Pretoria crowd after nailing a match-winning drop goal when the Crusaders pipped the Bulls back in 1999.
Rugby needs heroes, it needs villains, it needs storylines to draw in the interest of those who aren’t quite as interested in the game as they were one, two or three decades ago, and those who wren’t yet born during the so-called ‘golden era’ of the sport pre professionalism.
Kirifi had every reason to respond to miscreants in the crowd when the Hurricanes bested the Waratahs on Saturday – and even if he hadn’t, it’s the kind of behaviour that many would remember for years to come, which sometimes is exactly what you need to reignite a flame in a sport which isn’t necessarily attracting the same attention it once did.
