Posts Tagged ‘rugby’

3rd Law Part 38 – tennis balls and chocolate coloured paint

Sunday, June 9th, 2013

The sun is doing its level best to peek through the clouds. Struggling mind you. I have a warm cup of tea in my hand which helps to warm one hand up but we all know what happens to warm cups of tea where the 3rd Law is concerned. It will be cold very soon. I might make another.

I do have to pop out this afternoon to buy the milk that I forgot to buy when I popped out this morning to buy milk. Came back with lots of good stuff for tea but no milk. Also I want to buy a job lot of cheap tennis balls. We have been playing cricket in the back garden and have lost every single ball in the house. Used to have loads of them. We still have real cricket balls but there is no way we are going to use them in the back garden. Recipe for disaster.

I did buy the kids 5 real cricket balls. Very handy for when we go to the nets. We lost one within 5 minutes of using them. Didn’t fancy looking in amongst the nettles when we were only wearing shorts. We quite like going down the nets. I throw a few balls down. No bowling. I’m rubbish at bowling. Throwing from close range is far more accurate and a test for the batsman. Then after a sensible amount of time we go and sit in front of the clubhouse and watch the game in the middle. It’s good when we win though tbh it almost doesn’t matter. The good bit is just sitting there taking in the relatively slow pace of the game. V relaxing.

There are occasions when someone brings sandwiches around together with other left overs from the players’ tea. We have been known to fill up on the sandwiches, pork pies and cakes before heading home for our own meal. I used to take the kids to the ground in the winter. Both rugby and cricket were played there so there was all year round sport.

The deal with the kids was that they could have anything they liked, within reason, provided I was allowed to have a few undisturbed beers with my pals. It’s an ideal place for the kids to run wild with lots of other kids there and no doubt one or two more responsible parents keeping an eye on them. Chocolate was off the menu but crisps, peanuts and fizzy drinks were allowed. The problem with this arrangement was that they never had much of an appetite when they got home and their mother would wonder why they didn’t each much of their evening meal. It’s all part of growing up!

When I used to play rugby the combination of 80 minutes of effort on the pitch together with a few sherberts usually resulted in me falling asleep on the settee after we had finished our meal. There were a few knock on effects of this. First of all we soon stopped asking people around for dinner on Saturday nights and in turn stopped being asked. This is because I would always fall asleep. It was probably embarrassing for Anne but there was nothing that could be done about it other than not play rugby. It would be perfectly ok if dinner was with someone else who played rugby because both males would fall asleep. It wasn’t just me. It is standard practice in the rugby fraternity.

There was one occasion where I was about to nod off and Anne insisted that I helped her chose the paint colour for the front room before I did so. I argued that the reason that I didn’t contribute to  these decisions was because Anne always ignored my suggestions and ended up choosing what she had originally wanted in the first place. Ergo no point in me thinking about it. I was ok with this situation. I didn’t really care how the house was decorated anyway.

On this occasion she persevered and I chose a yukky chocolatey brown, just to make a point. “That’s fine, we’ll have that” she said. At this point I admonished her as I had just chosen the most horrible colour I could find. Turns out it wasn’t chocolatey brown but terracotta which apparently was all the rage at that time. Hmm. I turned over and went to sleep.

The following weekend I got home from the match, ate dinner and, you know by now, went to sleep. I woke up a couple of hours later to find that Anne had gone and painted the front room whilst I slept. The verdict? A horrible chocolatey brown. It didn’t look good but fortunately the next day when the paint had dried it looked ok. Men huh?! Women Huh?!

It would be reasonable to think that after my rugby playing days were over the falling asleep on the settee by 8pm became a thing of the past. Unfortunately instead of playing rugby I would go and watch it. This had the side effect of me being in the bar by half time and therefore starting on the beer much earlier than had been the case. Although I didn’t have the same on pitch exertion to tire me out its replacement with several additional beers ended up with the same result.

Nowadays if we are off out on a Saturday night early doors beers need to be avoided. You know it makes sense.

Back to the present there is a boy mowing the lawn for a quid which apparently includes laying out the cricket square. I need to pop out to get some tennis balls. Ciao baby.

3rd Law Part 37 here

3rd Law Part 39 here

Boxing Day Rugby Match, 2004

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Boxing Day at any rugby club in the country is when the true spirit of the sport emerges and its innate entertainment value is brought out by the bottle (seems a better way of putting it than bucket load).  Just as Christmas is a time for families to come together the traditional Boxing Day sporting event sees anyone that has ever been involved in the wide community of  rugby turn out to meet old friends and for some festive fresh air and exercise. The outcome is usually hugely amusing, the rugby flowing and people discover their shortcomings under benign and understanding circumstances that all can enjoy.

These days it is often the only game of rugby a veteran plays in the year.  An old trooper who has long hung up his boots will root them out of the cupboard when his son or his daughters’ husband comes home for the holidays in a desperate attempt to keep in touch with his youth and to show he can still do it.  It is a well known fact that a rugby player never retires.  It is simply that the gaps between matches get longer and longer. Indeed at a recent holiday in Center Parcs this rugby writer dug out his old shorts to play badminton with his kids and not only did they refuse to play with him in his old gear but they frogmarched him to the sports shop to buy a more modern, longer and therefore trendier and more acceptable kit. Harrumph.

At Lincoln Rugby Club,  Boxing Day was a beautiful crisp winter’s day.  Even though the midday the sun was low in the sky and the ground was largely frozen around fifty players old and new turned out to do battle on the ice rink.  If this had been a league match the game would have been abandoned before it started but there was one hundred percent consensus that the game was important enough to carry on.

Because Lincoln only have the one strip there was some objection because of the cold conditions to the notion of playing one side in “skins” and it was decided that one team would just turn their shirts inside out. As Chairman of Selectors Keith Younger read out the teams individuals would troop over to one side or the other just as they still do in school during the break when the two captains pick their own team.  Those not chosen were not too dejected because they knew that they could keep their coats on for another half an hour on the touchline.

This truly is a family day at Lincoln Rugby Club and a number of families turned out to play.  In the vanguard was Geoff Newmarch who brought three grown up sons along for a game, followed by Adie Smith and son Tom. Other father and son pairings included the Smalls, Dudleys, Woods and Woodthorpes.  The Younger brothers added a fraternal slant and Malcolm Withers at the young old age of 68 turned out in a museum piece of a scrum cap that has preserved his good looks through six decades of the sport.

Referee John Kirk turned out in a Father Christmas outfit that bulged so much after his Christmas lunch the previous day that everyone present felt that he would never get down that chimney again unless he put in a real effort at slimming in the New Year. John kept the game flowing as never before – nobody really wanted to slow down for a scrum or lineout because it was too cold.

At half time as the teams changed round and those players yet to have their turn came on several bottles of port were distributed together with oranges soaked in chilli vodka.  If anyone minded the vodka no-one mentioned it and in fact it was so cold that it may be the case that no-one actually noticed the difference from the normal healthy orange segment.

As for the game itself?  It ebbed, flowed, it entertained, kicks were booed and individual performances were cheered, many tries were scored and nobody kept the score. Old timers received knocks that reminded them why they didn’t play any more and of all the players on the pitch no one person gets a specific mention other than Pete Webster who likes to see his name in print. Well played Pete.  Well played everyone.  See you in 2005.