The cold was bitter; more than that, resentful, as though it harboured a personal grudge against every one of the 30 shivering, bedraggled boys out on the pitch. Relentless too. Wind-whipped, driving sleet pummelled the body and blurred the eyes, making recognition of the opposition’s mud-caked jerseys virtually impossible, especially for a colour-blind kid like me. And as one in twelve boys is colour blind, there must have been at least one more among us stumbling around, vaguely glimpsing 30 identically clad players.
Ours was a football school, proper football, it always had been. But the new head of PE, a northerner, had decided to trial his beloved rugby for a season, partly, he said, to toughen up us southern softies. And he meant it. So, the goalposts and nets were gone, replaced by the H-shaped posts of the fifteen-a-side game.
That first trial match, which followed a single gymnasium session outlining the basics of rugby, was arguably my toughest sporting event as a participant.
True, there was my final-minutes broken leg in a football cup semi-final. True, there was the humiliation, when preparing for my second-round jump in an inter-club athletics match, of hearing the stadium announcer say excitedly over the Tannoy: “And now on the long-jump runway is Daley Thompson of Woodford Green.” All eyes turned my way; Daley was already a star name in track and field. I ran, terrified, and managed a feeble foul jump, prompting a speedy correction from the announcer: “Er, sorry, that was actually R Rigby of Ilford.” I did, in fact, lead the future Olympic decathlon gold medallist for one round, but only because he also overstepped the board on his first jump.
My introduction to rugby was brutal. It felt like a battle for survival
Those two sporting disasters were painful, but my introduction to rugby union was brutal; these days anything similar would probably be referred to social services as damaging to our physical and mental wellbeing. It certainly felt like a battle for survival as we moved like a huge crab up and down the field, our old-fashioned leather boots being sucked into the snow. We attempted ludicrous tackles, formed scrummages that were almost impossible to break, mostly collapsing into tangles of writhing, steaming bodies, and tried to catch a waterlogged ball that seemed heavier than the medicine ball back in the gym.
Out on the wing, I escaped the worst of the mayhem. And gradually, as the torture slowly abated and my fingers regained some feeling, I managed the odd run, occasionally with the ball, and, perhaps masochistically, began to enjoy it. And from that bruising start, as I got to properly understand the game, I came to appreciate and admire the myriad skills, the phases of play and the tactics of rugby union. I even played club rugby for a year or two; I’d give any sport a go back then. I was still on the wing, but generally saw a bit more of the ball and mostly knew what to do with it.
Later, my wife had the pleasure – she says it was a pleasure – of teaching drama to future England internationals and brothers, Tom and Ben Youngs. Ben is now the most capped England player of all time, but when they were schoolboys, in different year groups, Tom being a little older, both embraced drama wholeheartedly, particularly the physicality of the subject. The only problem was, their teacher recounts, that whatever the dramatic intention of a lesson, be it improvisation on some sensitive theme or text-based scenes from Shakespeare or Brecht, they somehow almost always climaxed in a rugby scrum.
My own enjoyment of rugby union continues, and though my first sporting love has always been football, the defensive, over-cautious, counter-attacking style currently adopted by many teams can, sadly, make the beautiful game a boring watch. Rugby union, particularly at international level, is different, and the recent Six Nations series, dominated by the brilliant Irish and the sensational French, was a magnificent appetiser for the upcoming World Cup, to be contested here in France this autumn. Les Bleus inflicted England’s heaviest home defeat of all time at Twickenham back in March, with a spectacular 53-10 win. And around these parts they still speak endlessly of that unforgettable victory in bars and in… well, more bars.
I’ve watched European club championship matches at a packed Toulouse stadium and village games alongside no more than twenty spectators at my local club. My favourite player locally is named Jean-Michel. A general handyman by trade, he is softly spoken, mild-mannered, painfully shy, and goes about his work diligently and quietly. But once he steps onto the rugby pitch, he undergoes some sort of metamorphosis. The first time I saw him play he came on as a replacement with fifteen minutes to go. An openside flanker, he was incredible for nearly ten minutes, making crucial interceptions, galvanizing the pack, and launching into a charging run that led to a try in the corner.
“He’s brilliant,” I said to the friend with me, “why don’t they play him from the start?” “You’ll see,” came the reply. A couple of minutes later, it happened. From a maul in the middle of the pitch, Jean-Michel suddenly stood up, swung a mighty right fist and laid out his opposite number. “Every time,” my friend muttered, as the sent-off Jean-Michel shuffled past us, “every time.”
Roll on September.
Robert Rigby is a journalist, author, scriptwriter and musician
