The mullet is back at the Rugby World Cup like a resilient horror movie murderer

All of us occasionally find something online which we wish we had never seen. This week’s unwelcome incursion came via ITV’s social media team, which provided a chilling image that has been impossible to shake. Nine heinous headshots from the Rugby World Cup which signal the apocalypse. Yes, the mullet is back.

If you missed its first go, around the 1980s, this is a haircut defined as short on top and long over the shoulders, or “business in front, party in back”. You could say the same thing about a scrum, if being a blindside flanker was a great laugh rather than a job which should be forbidden under international law.

The mullet has been spotted occasionally on the campuses of artsy universities for some time, a discerning choice for this generation’s most promising post-post-ironists. But it took Paul Mescal appearing at this year’s Oscars with a pair of hairy tufts perching above his Gucci tux jacket for the resurgent mullet’s crossover moment. Now they are an honest-to-goodness semi-regular sight on the streets of London. How? And more to the point, why?

As should be clear by consulting my byline picture, I have no authority to pass judgement on any elements of fashion, so instead here is m’learned friend and Telegraph men’s style editor Stephen Doig: “The mullet’s curious resurgence, like a resilient horror movie murderer that just can’t be killed no matter how many bullets they put in him, is due in part to the cyclical nature of fashion and, by extension, beauty and grooming trends.

“Whatever was marred as uncool back in the day eventually gets a second wind, and with Gen Z discovering anew shell suit tops, frameless coloured sunglasses and bucket hats for the first time, so too have the young men of that befuddled generation taken up the mullet. Perhaps there’s a charming sense of irony in it, perhaps it’s a refreshing change from the rugby player skinhead cut, or perhaps they’re hankering for a simpler, 1980s-inflected time.”

Everything comes back round again, it seems. But it does not always reach rugby. Let us examine the naughty nine celebrated by ITV, all of whom look as if they have lost the same bet. Most realise it is important to smile with a haircut this frightening, because if you do not you will look like a murderer. Samoan Jonathan “Tiger King” Taumateine has the right idea, Scotland’s Hamish Watson absolutely does not.

Chile’s Esteban Inostroza, clearly just passing through rugby on his way to the undercard of a WWE pay-per-view, goes for the rarely-seen bald on top, beard and neck-straggles combination. His yellow card minutes after coming on against Samoa does not suggest someone who is making consistently sensible decisions.

For the mullet classicists look no further than Carter Gordon. This is a haircut that never truly went away in parts of Australia, and Gordon, Mona Lisa-like, manages to straddle the line between earnest and knowing. He has since got a semi-sensible haircut, but played poorly in his country’s defeat to Fiji on Sunday and was hooked at half time. Coincidence?

Not according to former All Black Jack Goodhue, who reckoned his mullet improved his game. “There’s actually scientific evidence that shows it makes me faster,” he said. “It was done at Harvard, I think.” Good enough for us, but please do not let this encourage any more hair silliness in France.

In fact, this is something which needs government intervention. A strict code of conduct must be handed down to all relevant governing bodies, because rugby is incapable of self-regulation in this area. A sport which has tolerated Joe Marler for this long simply cannot be trusted.

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