The Breakdown | Constant online anger threatens to overwhelm thrills on the rugby pitch


Too much shouty negativity and everybody loses: like all the best drama there have to be shafts of emotional light as well

Welcome to The Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly (and free) rugby union newsletter. Here’s an extract from this week’s edition. To receive the full version every Tuesday, just pop your email in below:

Sport brings out the best and worst in us. The same occasionally applies to sportswriting. One minute it is all breathless hyperbole, florid adjectives and poetic descriptions of the best days of our lives. The next it is curtains for some ashen-faced manager and the purple prose turns to acid rain. One day you’re a rooster, as the ex-Wallaby rugby coach Alan Jones used to say, the next you’re a feather duster.

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