Maddening
search for
those lyrics
On the verandah she smoked a cigar,
Cigar – a-a-a- ar.
Sitting beside her, he played a guitar,
Guitar – a-a-a-ar …
I WAS privileged the other morning to have this rugby song sung to me over the telephone by Sue Davies, of Hilton, up in the Midlands. Reason: she's desperate to find somebody who can help her with the complete lyrics of the song with all its lovely cadences?
Apparently it has quite a few verses which cover love, betrayal, revenge, murder, punishment – the lot. (Yes, I've always been wary of ladies who smoke cigars).
She approaches me, having read the lines we featured last week of the rugby song advising rail passengers against passing water while the train is standing at the station, the tune based on a piece of classical music.
Sue's quest goes back to the 1955 rugby tour of South Africa by the British Lions, when her older sister (Sue herself was a small kid at the time) came to Durban to watch the Lions play, and wound up at an after-match party where scrumhalf Dicky Jeeps led a rendition of the ballad.
"I learned it from my sister and it's wormed its way into my consciousness but somehow I've forgotten most of the lines. It's frustrating, infuriating."
Wow, Sue, I'm at a loss. I could help with The Good Ship Venus, The Ball of Kirriemuir, She Waded In The Water and The Wild West Show, but I'm afraid my repertoire of rugby songs doesn't include the girl with a cigar and the fellow with the guitar.
Can anyone out there help? Sue would be much obliged.
Two games
WHERE have the years gone? I was in short pants when I watched both matches played in this province by the 1955 British Lions.
They were played at Kingsmead because Kings Park had not yet been built.
In the Natal match, a try was scored for the Lions by Tony O'Reilly, the Irish winger playing out of position as centre, who eventually went on to buy this newspaper group.
The other match was against Central Universities (I think that was Natal, Rhodes and Free State), where bald-headed flanker Basie van Wyk played a blinder, scoring a try right in front of where we were sitting.
Great rugby, but I was a little too young in those days for guitars and cigar-smoking ladies.
No contest?
DO THE rugby authorities not need to look again at the law over "no contest" scrums? Do they not distort the game?
The Boks had to play 60 minutes of no-contest scrumming against Italy last Friday. Okay, the Italians had lost their two tighthead props to injury. But is it too much to ask a loosehead prop to play tighthead off the bench? Or any other forward?
No-contest scrums are the nearest thing to the monkey scrums of Rugby League. You don't expect them at the Rugby Union World Cup.
The laws surely need tweaking. If nobody can be found on the bench to safely replace an injured frontranker, let them pressgang a hefty ice cream vendor. The game must go on.
Tailpiece
Paddy: "If Oi were rich as Bill Gates., Oi'd be even richer."
Mick: "How so?"
Paddy: "Oi'd do a bit of window-cleanin; on de side."
Last word
The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. - Helen Rowland
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