Do you know what the England cricketers who plotted the first rebel tour to apartheid South Africa in 1982 called themselves? The Guillotine Squad. Because, as one said later, “it was that kind of atmosphere: head‑on-block”.
That story came to mind last week when Jon Rahm became the latest player to join LIV Golf in a deal reportedly worth upwards of £450m. Although in Saudi Arabia, of course, the fear of a head on a block is horrifyingly real, not a glib punchline.
So welcome to the Guillotine Squad, Jon Rahm. And say hello to your new teammates: Cristiano Ronaldo, Tyson Fury, Gianni Infantino, Jordan Henderson, Anthony Joshua, Neymar, Newcastle United, Brooks Koepka, Lionel Messi, and plenty of others besides. You are not the first. You won’t be the last, either.
Some are already calling you a hypocrite, given that last year you rubbished LIV’s 54-hole shotgun format and insisted you played for the love of the game not “monetary reasons”. But let’s not be overly damning. If the many millennia have taught us anything, it is that humans are fallible and flippable. And Saudi money can make most people’s eyes bulge faster than any narcotic.
At the same time, though, I am not sure you fully understand the consequences of your decision. Last year you spoke about how “history and legacy” mattered to you. So realise this: no matter how many majors you win, or charitable donations you make, history will judge you differently. Your legacy will always carry an asterisk. And when your obituary is written, LIV will live on, in perpetuity.
All of which brings us neatly back to the parallels between those rebel cricket tours and the Saudis’ move into golf. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it carries echoes. South Africa had an appalling and discriminatory system, in which political opponents were harassed and sent to prison. So, too, has modern Saudi Arabia. Yet then, as now, plenty of players were happy to open their wallets and look the other way.
“I’ve got nothing on my conscience, I’m just here to play cricket,” the England cricketer Wayne Larkins said. “I’m here to grow the game,” Rahm insisted last week. The West Indies star Viv Richards had the right idea when he turned down £250,000 to join a rebel tour. “Blood money”, he called it.
In South Africa, the authorities used those seven rebel tours between 1982 and 1990 for political capital, claiming it signalled the return of international cricket. They, just like the Saudis nowadays, were using sport to normalise the state and distract from its myriad abuses. They were sportswashing long before we knew what to call it. The players were complicit, then and now. As a Guardian editorial put it in 1982 after the first set of English players – who were nicknamed “the Dirty Dozen” – touched down in South Africa: “The tourists may say they are simple sportsmen voyaging merely to play cricket. The drumbeats of propaganda that sound as they fly into Johannesburg and make for the nets gives that the lie.”
Arguably the biggest difference down the years is that the number of zeros on the players’ cheques has gone up, while the scale of the outrage has subsided. The Dirty Dozen received between £40,000 and £60,000 but, having been widely condemned by MPs and the public, were banned from the international game for three years. From that perspective, LIV’s players have got off lightly.
And while I doubt Rahm has read the latest Amnesty International report into Saudi Arabia, it makes for grim reading. Those who call for peaceful expression, or who form community organisations, have been “sentenced to lengthy prison terms following grossly unfair trials”. Human rights defenders have been harassed in prison. And “the country’s first personal status law came into effect, codifying male guardianship and discrimination against women”. Then there are the numerous executions “following grossly unfair trials, including in cases of individuals who were children at the time of the alleged crime”.
People who visit the kingdom regularly tell me it is changing. Women no longer have to hide their faces in public. They can work. They can eat in restaurants with men. Sport is part of that transformation, too: the number of registered female football players between 2021 and 2023 is up 86%, I am told, albeit from a very low base. Yet that change clearly only goes so far. Over the same period, the kingdom has jailed a woman, Salma al-Shehab, for 34 years for merely following and retweeting dissidents and activists. And also executed 81 people in one day.
As I write, I am looking at the Guardian obituary of Bob Woolmer, the only travelling member of England’s 1982 rebel tour to have died. Woolmer was a lovely man and a truly innovative coach. Yet he could never entirely escape his past. “Despite being a cheerfully confident and generous individual, he was involved in some of the game’s fiercest controversies,” the sixth paragraph begins, before talking about that rebel tour.
True, Saudi Arabia is not isolated from the sporting world like South Africa was. And the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund might soon agree to a merger that will end golf’s civil war and lessen the stain of joining LIV. Rahm can also point to the ever shifting nature of golf politics being part of his thinking.
But make no mistake – the Spaniard has chosen a side. And that decision means he will always be seen as a poster boy for LIV. And Saudi Arabia.
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