Kokstad rugby conundrum
SEVERAL readers have questioned last week's team photograph of the Kokstad Rugby Club in 1908 .
Dave Thompson, of Umhlali, notes that the photograph features a football.
"Why did they play with a football? Another story from the 'Wild West'?"
My old colleague Des Cooney notes that only 11 were wearing kit. Äre you sure it's not their soccer
side?"
Chris Krause says the photo looks suspiciously like a soccer team. "But I suppose they weren't fussy in
Kokstad in those days!"
Then Don Porter (a pernickety fellow-member of the Natal Cricket Society and an austere lunch club to
which I belong) expresses himself thus:
"Your photo of the Kokstad Rugby Club team of 1908 shows a round (not
oval) ball and 11 men in playing kit (one of whom has a different shirt and is
bigger than the others and must be the goalie) plus four four older men wearing jackets and
ties, as would befit the club officials."
Well spotted, gentlemen, but there's an explanation. No, it's not that the Kokstad Rugby Club of 1908
were traditionalists who played with the same type of ball – a football – as William Webb-Ellis picked up
and ran away with at Rugby School all those years ago, to launch the game of rugby.
It's rather more prosaic. In Kokstad in those days they played rugby with a watermelon. In the
photograph what appears to be a football is in fact a watermelon, bows-on.
In Kokstad in those early days you had to earn your rugby colours and kit. The gentlemen in jackets and
ties were novices who had not yet earned their colours and kit. They had to strip down and play in their
underpants, which in those days were made of sturdy corduroy.
Come to Kokstad this weekend and watch the Sharks play the Cheetahs in the Vodacom Cup. To mark
Kokstad Rugby Club's 125th
Will they strip to their underpants? Not on the field –that happens only afterwards in the pub.
Rugby debacle
HISTORY was made at King's Park last Saturday. For the first time the rugby on display was worse than
the cacophonous "music" with which we were bombarded.
Has anyone ever seen anything like it? This wasn't just a bad day at the office, it was a day nobody
pitched up.
Those inept attempts to pick up rolling ball in our own 22. Those calamitous line-outs. Those missed
tackles. That line-out where we allowed a Crusader to burst through, run 25m and score. Mama mia! We
babo! Is there any recovery from this?
The punters in the Duikers'Club afterwards were unanimous. Not in decades of provincial rugby had
there been a humiliation like this.
It's a good thing this is the professional era where primordial loyalties are not quite as strong as they
once were. If Natal had ever taken a hiding like this, I'd have become emotional.
anniversary, they'll be playing with a watermelon..
Fat ants
UNK food is getting out of hand. Scientists in New York have discovered that
pavement ants are eating the same junk food as their human counterparts –
hamburgers, chips, sugary drinks – meaning we can look forward to an epoch of
grossly obese ants.
Tests were performed on ants collected from pavements and traffic islands
in Manhattan . Their bodies contained the molecular fingerprint of junk food,
according to research conducted in North Carolina State University.
The same was not true of more genteel ants that frequent leafy park areas.
Several researchers from North Carolina State University have gone missing. A
few have been found in lunatic asylums, and the university is trying to trace the
rest who are still caught upo inb the New York court system.
New York policemen are sceptical about people who claim to be testing
poavement ants for junk food, and they turn them in for their own good.
Tailpiece
A WOMAN and a man are lying in bed when her cellphone rings.
She answers in a cheery voice: "Hi, I'm so glad you called. Really? That's wonderful. I'm so happy for
you. That sounds terrific. Great! Thanks. Okay. Bye bye."
"Who was that?"
"My husband - telling me about the great time he's having on his golf trip with you."
Last word
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr
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