Rugby
Playing Rugby for the school
I wouldn’t say that I have been particularly sporting, however, I have “had a go” at many different games over the years.
Most of it my sporting experience was of the “knock-about” variety rather than organised sport. The trouble with organised sport was that it required talent, skill, training and commitment. Now I have a fairly compulsive personality and so commitment is not a great problem once I am interested in a subject, and I appreciate the value of training to bring out talent and develop skills … but these have to be present in the first place, and in my case, I am sorry to say, they are fairly limited.
Anyway, as a result of trying so many sports over the years I know the rules of many games and can turn my hand to almost any of them. I quite enjoyed playing Squash and Volleyball when I was young, but they were never big sports – so there was not much opportunity to play them. Perhaps that was why I liked them – nobody watching and so less chance of embarrassing myself in public … and not that much competition. Another reason, looking back on it, why I liked Squash in particular, was that it was an individual sport … so there was less of a sense of letting other members of the team down by silly mistakes or a lack of talent … on the other hand, my hero, (Alistair Cooke), was a great fan of two “individual” sports – Golf and Tennis … I have never played golf and, as a schoolboy, I played one full match of tennis and lost: six-love, six-love, six-love … I never took up Tennis again.
Without much talent and without practice to develop whatever miniscule skills I might posses, I always joke that I was a natural choice for seventeenth man on the fourth team for the Rugby club. For the record, the Rugby clubs I belonged to only ever turned out four teams … as a result the the fourth team had very few matches and played very irregularly … and, anyway, a Rugby team only fields fifteen players … so I was always the second reserve … the last choice.
When it came to Rugby, my interest in the sport came about almost by accident – like so much in my life. A friend of mine talked me into volunteering for the school team when I was 14. Now, ours was basically a soccer school and everyone played football. There was plenty of talent, and no chance of my being picked for a team. The Rugby team was different, however, more like a social club. It was run a retired Army major and we all called him Major, or Sir. He taught the Third and Fourth Boys Remove classes … basically boys who were never going to do well in examinations and were thought to be “a bit of a handful”. His military style, hypnotic glare and barking voice probably stood him in very good stead – but he although he instilled fear in everyone who met him, he also managed to command great respect and affection from those who did get to know him.
From a public school and military background he and the Councillor (a similar character who also taught the Boys Remove) were naturals for coaching the school Cricket team. The Major, however, ran the school’s three rugby teams on his own. Even though he conscripted many of the his Remove classes into the teams, (those that didn’t play Soccer), there were never enough players. I turned up for our first practice on Thursday and was told: “There’s a match on Saturday, be here at nine o’clock and bring two shillings (10p now) for the bus.” I thought I was going to watch the game and perhaps learn a little … but there were only eleven of us and I found myself in the three quarter line …wondering what on earth was going on. We lost. We lost nearly every match. Still, we had fun doing so.
There is a saying that “Soccer is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans, but Rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.” I don’t know if that is a fair reflection, especially in these days when the sport is more professional than it was in my day. (At that time “professionalism” used to be a dirty word in the game.) There is another maxim that Rugby has a place for all sorts of players … it doesn’t matter how big or small, tall or short, fat or slim you are … there’s a place for you in the team. I am quite small and certainly not a typical “prop forward”, but that’s the position I played for most of my school career. Over the years, I have played in virtually every position, except the crucial positions of scrum-half and fly-half.
One of things I learned to appreciate in those early days was the camaraderie of the team. At first I wasn’t sure. The Remove boys were renowned for being troublesome hooligans, and OK, so they smoked … they swore … they fought … but they turned out to be regular guys with a sense of humour and loyalty. They were not half as frightening as I, in my timid way had thought of them beforehand. In the Monday morning assemblies the results of the school’s soccer matches were reported simply: First Eleven versus Nunnery Wood, 1-0; Second Eleven versus Dyson Perrins, 2-3 … and so on. The Rugby reports however, were full match reports prepared by the Major and read out by the Deputy Headmistress, complete with names and blow by blow accounts. On one occasion she suggested that as so few people played the game, the results were usually so disappointing, and time was short, (I think the Major was also absent on that occasion), then she might give the report a miss … but everyone in the room, (or so it seemed), let out a groan and so she relented. I hate to think what the atmosphere in the staff room would have been like if she hadn’t done so … the Major would not have been amused. Those reports were really important to some of the characters involved … it was the only form of recognition and worth that some people ever received.
When I was fifteen I decided that I wanted to have my Saturdays to myself, and announced that I was leaving the team. I still remember the look of betrayal on the Major’s face and the way I was ostracized by my former teammates. As it happens, it didn’t last long … although I liked having my Saturday’s free I also missed the flow of adrenalin and sense of belonging … and I was soon back in the team.
The boys of the Remove classes left school as soon as compulsory schooling was over … so the school’s first team needed an influx of fresh blood from the sixth form, and every year there was a trawl to see who could be persuaded or drafted into the team. As a result, we tended to have a young, less talented and less experienced team than many of the local schools, and this was often reflected in our results. The Major never gave up, however, and neither did we.
The Major was a real character. Rumour had it than in the second world war his jeep had driven over a landmine and he lost half a finger in the incident. I don’t know how much truth there was in the rumour, but I well remember how he used to point at you with the stub of the finger and the fear it used to instill in even the hardest of characters. He was feared by all and sundry and just knowing him and being able to talk to him was a source of kudos. I was walking through the school one day and called me over: “Claytor, come here.” I forget what he wanted but all of my friends, (“Cream Puffs” – he called them because they weren’t “man enough” to play Rugby … for that matter neither was I, technically, I was only in the team by default because there weren’t enough volunteers to play), stood by quaking in their boots. When the Major and I laughed together at something, they almost went into apoplexy.
He and his wife took us to see the local first class team, (Gloucester), play a match against another of the country’s strongest teams, (Leicester). It was the first time I had seen a mass of people engrossed in what was still, not only to us but generally at that time, very much a minority sport. It was a really enlightening and invigorating experience and I have always enjoyed attending matches ever since, no matter who is playing.
My brother, having passed the dreaded eleven plus, went to a local selective grammar school where Rugby was the major sport and soccer was definitely looked down upon. Everything he studied in school seemed to be different from what I studied … for example: he learned German whereas I struggled with French; he learned about the Georgians, Tories and Whigs, but my history seemed to stop with the Tudors and Stuarts; he studied weird subjects like economics which I wasn’t to encounter for years. In Rugby, however, we had something in common. He was a much better player than I was, and he taught me one very valuable lesson – one I am certain that the Major would have disapproved of: “Don’t worry too much about running across the field to get from one scrum to another … the action has a habit of coming back towards you, anyway.”
Together we joined the local Rugby club and I started playing for the fourths … never rising any further, but content with my weekly run around. Training twice a week was actually harder than a game … and, in theory, I could have missed it because I was never in the running for a place in a more senior team, and the fourths were always a “scratch team”.
When I went to college I carried on playing, but suddenly I was in more demand as a referee. Once again, that happened by accident. The team arrived at a game and there wasn’t a referee and as someone had to do it … I was asked. As a natural choice for seventeenth man, my skill on the team weren’t really missed and my refereeing meant that everyone else got a chance to play. The next I was drafted in again, and so an unofficial career as a referee began. I didn’t go through any of the training or examinations that are normally necessary for such a role – and it showed … but it was only a “scratch team”, a “knock about game” … and I got away with it … most of the time, at least.
When I started teaching the time came for me to pass on the enthusiasm that the Major had instilled in me. I began simply watching games because the school fields were close to my home in North London, soon I was being asked to accompany a team to away matches and then I found that I was given my own team to coach. Me. Coach. It seemed, and still seems, as if I was out of my league … but there was a need and I stepped into the role. I was never a great success. I couldn’t whip up the drive and enthusiasm as other coaches could, but over the years we had a reasonable record of success.
The school had an old boy’s club and I joined it. So did some of the sixth form and it was really quite funny to running along carrying the ball and have some seventeen year old yelling at me “Pass it sir, pass it.” We agreed that on the pitch he could call me Ian, but if he ever tried it in class he would be in trouble. He was never in trouble.
My playing days ended quite suddenly. I arrived early for a match one Saturday afternoon, to be greeted by cheers and was told to get in the car. A little surprised, because I thought that the fourth’s were playing at home, I did what I was told. We got to the ground and I started to get changed. I looked around and couldn’t see any of my regular teammates, but the penny only dropped when they gave me a shirt … it was a second team shirt. Someone hadn’t turned up and I had been drafted in to take their place. Once again I ended up in the three quarter line wondering what on earth was going on – just like in my first game.
This time, however, I was well and truly out of my depth. This was a serious game with serious opposition. The weather was beautiful. The pitch was on field under and embankment carrying trains of the London Underground system. That’s about all I remember.; Apparently, at one point in the game, someone in the opposition had the ball and came running at me … I tackled him and, so I am told, it was a “cracking” tackle. I am not sure if that means that it was a spectacularly good tackle, or they could hear the bones crack. As it happens, I hadn’t broken any bones – but I did suffer concussion. They were calling me all sorts of name, Peter, Paul, Mary … and I was answering to all of them as if it was my own. They took me to hospital where the doctor diagnosed concussion and told me to rest, not to read or watch television. Ok, no problem. Monday I felt well and went to work – no problem.
Later my shoulder started to hurt and began to swell. I went back to hospital and had more x-rays. The consultant told me that one of my vertebrae had chipped and the chip of bone was “traveling” and it had trapped a nerve. It would probably give me problems throughout my life – sometimes trapping a nerve and giving me pinching pains, but most of the time, I wouldn’t know a thing about it. However, “it would be better” if I gave up playing Rugby. So I did.
I continued coaching a school team, but perhaps without the same enthusiasm and conviction as before (and that was never very good anyway), but I still enjoyed going to and watching matches. It is one of the things I miss a little, here in Kyrgyzstan. There is a local Rugby Federation and they organize a festival every summer, but to my regret I have never managed to get there. The Kazakhs have a fairly good team – not quite up to the standard of the Ukraine, but most of the Ukrainian national team play in Europe. The police have a number of rugby teams – it is thought to promote fitness and character. I do get to see the occasional Six Nations match, but these days I am limited mostly to reading reports of matches on the internet.
I once saw an advert on the internet for the National team shirt of the Kyrgyz Republic and I thought, “I must get that”, but the site was based in the US and they wouldn’t accept my credit card as my IP address was in Kyrgyzstan … crazy isn’t it … I’m in Kyrgyzstan but I can’t buy the Kyrgyz National Rugby shirt!
Bishkek