Ragged Rebels Rubbish Rugger

As I sit in the corner of a cosy pub on Tuesday evening, a pint of frothy ale in front of me (Windsor Knot – like a classic Best Bitter, but with a contemporary hoppy punch) and a pen in my hand, I take comfort in the fact that at this very moment I’m supposed to be training in the wind and the rain but am instead warm, dry, and gently approaching inebriation. I am however aware that if I and some of my fellow ragged Rebels were more diligent in our midweek duties we might have resembled a coherent rugby team on Saturday, rather than a bunch of headless and slightly selfish chickens.

In an inspirational text reminiscent of Henry V or Emelio Estevez in The Mighty Ducks our dear yet sadly absent leader had assured us that if we played as a team, victory would be ours. Reader, we did not.

We set off down to Old Colfeians with a team brimming with talent but with so little experience playing together that if asked we probably wouldn’t have been able to correctly name at least half of the people we were playing with. At least, that’s my excuse – if I fail to name you in this “report” or mistakenly attribute your moment of glory to somebody else I apologise. The notable exception to this is Jamie, whose successful attempt to secure Dick of the Day was so heroic that his name will live on in infamy. More on that later, though it’s worth adding that he did redeem himself by downing his punishment pint like a hero, unlike the guy with the Transformers fetish (hauled up to tell his embarrassing story of a sexual nature for a second time for the benefit of those that missed it the first time) whose abortive attempts at rapid consumption were quite frankly embarrassing. That’s okay too though, because he may well have scored one of our tries – at least, somebody must have done and it might as well have been him. Anyway, to step into the action…

During the first quarter we were dominant; we had the Old Colfs pinned in their own half and obviously scared. It was clear from the outset that we were faster, stronger and prettier than they were, and that it was only a matter of time before they rolled over and offered us the game on a platter. All we needed to do was to stick to the game plan, ship the ball out to our vastly superior backs and let them swoop and soar and scamper about (like backs do) until the opposition were exhausted and begging for mercy. What we did instead was concede an obscene number of penalties, blunder blindly into contact and generally trip over ourselves in our efforts to give away possession. My personal theory is that the uncomfortably cramped changing rooms at Old Colfs had a detrimental effect on our collective psyche, preventing us from playing the expansive game of which we are capable. Our inability to offload (foreshadowed, perhaps, by the still-sticky paint on the changing room door?) meant we never really managed to spread the ball as far as the wings, which was a shame not just because it cost us the game but because Josh had made the noble sacrifice of hanging around out there as an honorary back and it would have been nice to see what he could do.

After a while the hysterical screams of “PASS, PASS YOU BASTARDS, PASS!!!” from the sidelines faded into a sort of soothing background noise, like birdsong or a gently babbling brook, easily ignored by Thomas as he evaded tacklers and support alike to wriggle over the line for the first try of the match. This was one of many impressive acts that earned our French friend Man of the Match, all the more impressive considering that he should by rights have been binned in the first ten minutes for multiple infringements including a truly exquisite high, late tackle. That’s what flankers are for, right? Rather than settling our nerves however, the points on the board seemed to send us into a panic and we conceded a soft equaliser before 20 minutes had elapsed.

Best not to dwell on that though, for it was then (or shortly after) that the decisive moment of the match occurred. We were able at last to string together enough passes to unleash the speed machine – travelling faster than that guy who jumped out of the balloon our Dick of the Day accelerated past first one tackler then another, leaving man after man in his wake until all that stood between him and the try line were a few short paces. And the invisible log. He tripped, he fell, and with him fell our hopes of triumph. After that we were all a bit scared that the dastardly Old Colfs might have left more invisible traps around the pitch, so avoided running anywhere too fast.

Some other things happened: we kept taking the ball into contact, all too often we didn’t successfully get it back out again, at one point the ball got kicked over a fence into a neighbouring garden, but Gunter managed to open a gate and did get it back out, so that was something. They scored another try, then we scored another one - for arguments sake let’s say it was the Transformers guy what did it. Things nearly got heated, at one point their hooker complained about some dubious bruises and some accusations were thrown around, but we managed to skilfully diffuse the situation with some good-natured homoerotic banter. Play to your strengths. Actually it was a tantalisingly tight run thing at the end, with only a few points separating us right up until the last five minutes when somebody (sorry lads) gave away a stupid penalty that led to their big prop crashing over for a final try. Ultimately though, we were like the disappointing 80’s supergroup Travelling Wilburys – our collective performance never really lived up to the potential of the individual players in the team.

[Ed: Ok, the Travelling Wilburys didn't exactly do fantastic things, but both Handle with Care (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8s9dmuAKvU&feature=relmfu) and End of the Line (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwqhdRs4jyA) are fantastic songs.]