A final short on quality but rich in strange scenes and images for the archive. This Morocco-Senegal, the Africa Cup of Nations final on Sunday 18 January won by the Lions of Teranga, delivered its share of surprises. And the sight of the Moroccan players, as in the semi-final against Nigeria, chasing after the Senegal goalkeeper’s towel mid-match, that towel being guarded at all costs by a team-mate, all but eclipsed a dour game. The towel thus became an object of fantasy. A “lucky charm”, according to the Moroccans, used in the spells of Senegalese marabouts and sorcerers to determine the outcome of the final. The result of the match ultimately proved the superstitions right… 

The towel in rugby, a sport of hands and sweat, is a more rational affair. Hands that catch, carry, pass, throw, hand off. Hands exposed to rain, to mud, sometimes to blood. In that world, the towel is not a comfort but a necessity. It determines the precision of the action, and therefore, in a way, the survival of the collective. The most obvious symbol remains that of the hooker, crouched over the touchline, drying the ball at length before his throw.

That act is almost sacred. It has nothing to do with superstition or with theatre. It answers an absolute demand for control. A badly thrown lineout can swing a match. And, incidentally, get you called a “pizzaiolo“. “People often talk about the jump or the timing, rarely about the ball“, Mathieu Blin, a former Stade Français player now a pundit for Canal, remarked a few weeks ago. Yet if it is wet, you can be perfect and it counts for nothing.” The towel removes the randomness. It puts the game back within the reach of human control. Or not…

The hooker is not the only one to reach for it. There was a time when the scrum-half wiped his hands on the shirts (preferably an opponent’s) before digging out a ball under pressure. Then with a towel, between passages of play, once the medics were out in the middle. The goal-kicker, above all, takes the time to dry the leather before a decisive kick. In an ever faster game, where every mistake turns into an immediate punishment, the towel acts as a minimum guarantee. It does not promise success, but it removes a variable.

Decompression, isolation

It also plays a subtler, almost invisible role. That of tempo. Drying the ball means suspending time without stopping it. A few seconds stolen from the chaos to breathe, refocus the attention, mentally rehearse the action to come. An “airlock“, for several fly-halves. In other words, an object of decompression, of isolation, before taking responsibility.

Finally, there is the ritual. The towel always folded the same way. Put down in the same place. Handed over by the same medic. Those details reassure players in a fundamentally unstable environment. Rugby loves routines, because they offer constancy amid the disorder. In a way they are perhaps the means of domesticating the violence of the game. And then the towel goes hand in hand with the magic spray, when a little knock comes along to cut down your confidence.

Unlike other sports, rugby does not try to deny the elements. It is a sport that deals with the rain, the cold, the mud. The towel could embody that philosophy and, while it does not erase the conditions, it lets you cope with them. A simple piece of cloth, a little rough or scratchy, universal, with no apparent technology or sophistication, it is a reminder that rugby remains a deeply physical, material sport.

“On a rugby pitch, nobody is surprised to see a player dry a ball before a key moment.”

The episode witnessed at the Africa Cup of Nations final struck a chord because it took out of its usual setting an object that, in rugby, shocks nobody. “On a rugby pitch, nobody is surprised to see a player dry a ball before a key moment, one coach tells us. It is part of the language of the game, discreet but essential.“

The towel will never show up on a stats sheet. It will not be credited with a stolen lineout or a successful penalty. And yet, without it, some of rugby’s foundational actions would lose their precision. The hooker’s throw, the catch under pressure, the winning kick… Every towel has its story, and it is a reminder that rugby is also played in the attention paid to detail. And sometimes the line between victory and failure comes down to a perfectly dry ball…