A game that's in the blood
WHY DO MEN play rugby? I've always believed it satisfies some primordial urge for battle. It's a war substitute – with the emphasis on substitute. It's controlled violence.
Izak van Heerden, the great Natal coach who changed the pattern of the game forever in South Africa, certainly believed that. He saw in rugby the hand to hand combat of the trenches, the glory of the cavalry charge.
Now reader Eric Hodgson – who travelled to New Zealand last year for the World Cup – contributes some lines that truly capture the ethos of rugby.
When the battle scars have faded
And the truth becomes a lie
And the weekend smell of liniment
Could almost make you cry.
When the last ruck's well behind you
And the man that ran now walks,
It doesn't matter who you are,
The mirror sometimes talks.
Have a good hard look old son!
The melon's not that great.
The snoz that takes a sharp turn sideways
Used to be dead straight.
You're an advert for arthritis,
You're a thoroughbred gone lame,
Then you ask yourself the question:
Why the hell you played the game?
Was there logic in the head knocks?
In the corks and in the cuts?
Did common sense get pushed aside
By manliness and guts?
Do you sometimes sit and wonder
Why your time would often pass
In a tangled mess of bodies
With your head up someone's ***e?
With a thumb hooked up your nostril,
Scratching gently on your brain
And an overgrown Neanderthal
Rejoicing in your pain!
Mate - you must recall the jersey
That was shredded into rags,
Then the soothing sting of Dettol
On a back engraved with tags!
It's almost worth admitting,
Though with some degree of shame,
That your wife was right in asking
Why the hell you played the game?
Why you'd always rock home legless
Like a cow on roller skates
After drinking at the clubhouse
With your low-down drunken mates.
Then you'd wake up - check your wallet,
Not a solitary coin,
Drink Berocca by the bucket,
Throw an ice pack on your groin.
Copping Sunday morning sermons
About boozers being losers
While you limped like Quasimodo
With a half a thousand bruises!
Yes - an urge to hug the porcelain
And curse Sambuca's name
Would always pose the question
Why the hell you played the game?
And yet with every wound re-opened
As you grimly reminisce it
Comes the most compelling feeling yet,
How you bloody miss it!
From the first time that you laced a boot
And tightened every stud,
That virus known as rugby
Has been living in your blood.
When you dreamt it, when you played it,
All the rest took second fiddle;
Now you're standing on the sideline
But your heart's still in the middle.
And no matter where you travel
You can take it as expected
There will always be a breed of people
Hopelessly infected.
If there's a team-mate, then you'll find him
Like a gravitating force,
With a common understanding
And a beer or three, of course.
And as you stand there telling lies
Like it was yesterday, old friend,
You'll know that if you had the chance
You'd do it all again.
You see - that's the thing with rugby,
It will always be the same.
And that, I guarantee,
Is why the hell you played the game!
Ghost ship
THERE'S something most eerie about that ghost ship that's been spotted off the west coast of Canada. It's not Hendrick Vanderdecken, the Flying Dutchman, on a somewhat different course, it's a Japanese trawler that has been adrift since the tsunami that struck more than a year ago - as reported in our news pages.
The vessel is part of a huge debris belt, weighing about 25 million tons, that started drifting eastward from Japan across the Pacific after the earthquake and resulting tsunami. It was unmanned at the time. Being bulky and exposed to the wind, it's being driven ahead of the rest of the debris.
But given the calamity that set it adrift, it's as spooky in its way as the Flying Dutchman legend.
Tailpiece
He: "If I could see you naked, I'd die happy."
She: "If I could see you naked, I'd probably die laughing."
Last word
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
No comments:
Post a Comment