The arrival of the police, the observers noted, was sometimes greeted with cheers from crowds simply excited that something was happening. These Castle Lager Rugby Championship matches are going to be crucial as we look to get our Rugby World Cup season off to a good start and playing against New Zealand away and Australia and Argentina on the highveld will be ideal for our preparation. Played 34; Won 30; Lost 3; Drawn 1; Points for: 1 193, Points against: 657; Tries scored 140, Tries conceded 62; Highest score 73-13; Biggest win 60 points. Win % 88%. The character referenced by Corbett, played by comedian and impressionist Harry Enfield and written by Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson, was the breakout hit from Saturday Live,the UK’s own short-lived answer to Saturday Night Live. It was a parody (rather snobbish with hindsight) of the vulgar nouveau riche – a charmless working class man with little education, no manners, and the frightfully vulgar habit of mentioning how much he had earned through the dreadfully menial business ofpainting and decorating. What the character captured, however, was the class confusion of the time, which meant that money and purchasing habits had ceased to be reliable barometers of social class. As one contemporary commentator put it, ‘all the surface indicators have gone to hell’.

the lager lout phenomenon did, over time,work in CAMRA’s favour in that it provided an opportunity for usto make a clear distinction between the discerning cask ale drinker in the pub environment versus the loutish ‘down-market’ behaviour of those fuelled by strong, cheap lagers. An announcement on the venues of the Tests in New Zealand and Argentina, as well as the Boks’ training camps will be made in due course. We respect the time beer needs to be produced, developing little by little inside the tanks. You just can’t rush craftsmanship, and that's why our traditional brewing processes can take up to 8 weeks. We obsess over flavour and aroma, and therefore we fight the quantities of mega production and economies of scale. One so-called ‘lager lout’ riot, for example, actually involved 600 middle-aged line dancers scrapping with local gypsies in the foyer of a village hall. A second group of youths — those who stood around adding bulk to the intimidating mobs but simply watching while their harder peers actually put the boot in — were quite different: smarter, more articulate, actively pursuing careers, and sometimes even public school educated.The problem for British brewers was that lager sophisticates were drinking imports. Ind Coope had a British lager in its roster, Graham’s, but it was Carlsberg that had the credibility. In 1959, though, Graham’s was relaunched and rebranded, as explained by Martyn Cornell in this 2012 blog post:

Andrea Gillies, the new bright young editor of Campaign’s annual Good Beer Guide, spoke yet more harshly of lager brewers at the launch of the 1989 edition of the book, as quoted in the Guardian for 25 October 1988: A similar pen portrait from The Times for 22 July 1981, of an 18-year-old east London skinhead called John O’Leary, mentions his habit of drinking lager from the can in the very first line. When England football fans returned home after an outbreak of violence at a match in Copenhagen in September 1982 journalists felt the need to mention that they arrived at Heathrow ‘drinking lager from cans’. Lager’s symbolism had become potent, the mere word a shortcut for a certain type of troubled, troublesome youth.Previously placid towns, villages and suburbs up and down the country were suddenly awash with mob violence – the kind of thing people expected in forsaken inner cities but which seemed newly terrifying as it spread to provincial market squares and high streets. Malcolm Marx needs one try to equal Schalk Burger’s record of 16 Test tries, the most by a Springbok forward. John Foreman is a postman and, on the face of it, not much to write home about. He is light, slight, with neat blond hair and a downy moustache. He seems meek — and each Saturday afternoon on the streets of some football town, he inherits the earth… In his terrace tribe there is a ritual and a sort of code. Each ‘good day out’ follows a similar pattern; invariably the violence is fuelled by a mixture of lager and cider. Fist fights are acceptable, knife fights are not. They must take a lot of blame for the promotion of lager and its violent consequences… My argument is not with lager itself, but with the big boys who are marketing ruthlessly to the wrong people… You can make even more [money] if you convince boys that drinking 10 pints makes them even more macho, but this results in the violence we have seen in the shires. Nienaber said the national coaches have been hard at work with their planning for the international season where they will look to build on an encouraging 2022 season: “The coaches have hit the ground running this year and we’ll continue to put in the hard yards as we attempt to ensure that we leave no stone unturned before the World Cup.

And of course others with their own agendas leapt on the bandwagon. Anti-drink campaigners, for example, saw an opportunity to protest newly extended pub opening hours, to call for tighter restrictions on pubs, and to argue for regulation of alcohol advertising. Though the report was sensible and far from fearmongering it made clear that the problem was real and that something worrying was going on Britain’s towns on Friday and Saturday nights. Warm DregsThe Campaign for Real Ale, of course, had a field day. For some time it had been re-orienting its guns from keg bitter, the great scourge of the 1970s, towards lager, and in an article for What’s Brewing in December 1988 Tony Millns gloated over lager’s new image problem: Let us be clear what we are referring to. We’re talking about gangs of hundreds of drunken white youths, often wielding knives and machetes, rampaging through otherwise peaceful towns and deliberately seeking battle with the police. At 12.15 am there was a loud noise and shouting coming from the Hamlet Road direction, and people ran from the Chinese towards the noise… As we rounded the corner into Hamlet Road we were confronted with a group of approximately 200 people moving towards us… The group walked up to the Chinese take-away and re-gathered outside the Job Centre. At this point the large police van arrived… The mass divided into smaller group and some made their way home. Two remaining large groups were herded towards the Wimpy and the Pightle, with one police officer on each side of the road, walking slowly behind them. This took another 15 minutes, and involved a lot of jeering and baiting of the police officers. Nienaber also rotated his loose forwards with the trio of Vermeulen and flankers Pieter-Steph du Toit and Marco van Staden, who started the opening match of the competition against the Wallabies, returning to the run-on team.

Reflecting on moral panics and the need for scapegoats in government and the media as we worked on this piece we got an uneasy feeling. Surely craft beer will get its turn in the doghouse, won’t it? There is, after all, a cycle new beer styles or market segments seem to go through: Further reading: Pete Brown is particularly brilliant on this subject, with Stella Artois as his case study, in 2003’s Man Walks into a Pub.) Obviously the result in New Zealand was bitterly disappointing, but we came into the season with a plan that will hopefully allow us to select the best possible squad for the World Cup and peak at the right time.” In the long-term this opportunism probably did CAMRA more harm than good, making it seem snobbish and puritanical, and perhaps alienating those who enjoyed lager and ale . It’s hard not to think that it simply suited police authorities, lobbying for funding increases and greater power, to present all this as a surging, terrifying trend.This will mark the first time since 2016 that the Boks host Australia in Pretoria, and the first time since 2013 that they take on Argentina in in Johannesburg, with South Africa having won both those fixtures, by 18-10 and 73-13 respectively. Nienaber said the fact that the match would mark their last on home soil this year made the match even more significant for the team. SA Rugby Director of Rugby Rassie Erasmus added that the match against the Pumas in Argentina ties in nicely with their RWC preparations: “Playing against Argentina in South America is unique as they have a very passionate home crowd that brings the best out of their team, so that environment will serve as good preparation for our team with an eye on the Rugby World Cup, especially after getting a taste of the atmosphere we can expect at the international extravaganza in our match against France in Marseille last November.” Prince Charles (attractive wife, lots of money), Don Johnson (star of Miami Vice, cars, pretty girls, expensive clothes, money), Rod Stewart and Peter Stringfellow (for the same reasons). In September 1988 at an informal press briefing John Patten MP, Minister for Home Affairs, pointed the finger: the chaos was a result of ‘the Saturday night lager cult’ and ‘lager louts’.