I will take a guess at the rugby reference - in the early to mid 1980s, the Aussie rugby team was noted for playing an attractive style of rugby dominated by flashy back play. The backs tend to be the less ugly ones. I heard a rumour that one of the young Aussie backs at the time, Michael Liner, was gay.
What I know of Joe Jackson is entirely gleaned from his songs and for me this just doesn't fit as a gay anthem or an anti-gay anthem. It is clearly about confused emotional feelings, something that he wrote about well and often. I would disagree with the view that he saw the view of real men as that changing for the worse and becoming less chivalrous. I think the song is about growing up and coping with a world where feelings become more and more complex. It is the ambiguouty of the lyric that makes this song work.
I will take a guess at the rugby reference - in the early to mid 1980s, the Aussie rugby team was noted for playing an attractive style of rugby dominated by flashy back play. The backs tend to be the less ugly ones. I heard a rumour that one of the young Aussie backs at the time, Michael Liner, was gay. What I know of Joe Jackson is entirely gleaned from his songs and for me this just doesn't fit as a gay anthem or an anti-gay anthem. It is clearly about confused emotional feelings, something that he wrote about well and often. I would disagree with the view that he saw the view of real men as that changing for the worse and becoming less chivalrous. I think the song is about growing up and coping with a world where feelings become more and more complex. It is the ambiguouty of the lyric that makes this song work.