Wherever the great game of rugby is played…

It was in a little brick changing room beside a field in central New South Wales.  The game had ended and we’d lost to a team who had just played their first ever game in first division.  They were drunk on the victory already and the little sheet of ply that divided the building into two areas did little to stop their enthusiasm from pouring through.

We’d played terribly and walking off the field we knew it.  As we slumped on the benches in that little shed we had every right to sulk and rue our chances in a game we’d done everything we could to lose.  To make things worse, the boys next door started singing, or rhythmically shouting, ‘Yellow Submarine’ which was their team song on account of the colour of
their jerseys.

Then it happened; one of those wonderful occasions when rugby becomes something more than just a sport.

Our manager, an old clubman who’d played in and coached at every level in the club and had been a founding member way back when, dragged an esky full of beers into the middle of the room.

Breaking into a big smile as the singers broke into yet another round of the chorus, he picked up two beers from deep in the ice, looked around the small room with this contagious little grin and said ‘come on boys, lets go congratulate these blokes’.

One by one we forgot our troubles, grabbed our beers and followed him out of our side of the shed and into theirs.  With little other introduction than a nod and a smile we found our opposite numbers, gave them one of our beers and drank to their future success with the other. 

As we squeezed in we quickly breached the room’s capacity so one of their blokes gently kicked down that bit of ply that had previously been separating us so we could all sit in one room together.  Their blokes loved that we had come in to share a beer with them and we sat in that shed drinking and talking for an hour or more before eventually being pulled out for the after game function, most of us barely better dressed than we were when the final whistle went.

Later that evening, or perhaps it was early in the blur of the next morning, one of the local policeman who had moonlighted as their tight-head prop kindly let me sleep off the evening’s intake on his front verandah.  Before I started the hour and a half drive home the next day he insisted that I join his family for a big fry up of sausages and eggs and
when I left he and his wife waved goodbye from the front garden.  I remember at the time being more than a little overwhelmed at the readiness of these people’s hospitality but nonetheless thankful for it. 

Needless to say on the return leg of the season, when they came to our patch, we had a good night out although to be honest I can’t remember who won the game.

Having since then spent time playing, watching, talking or writing about the game as it is played all around the world, I find myself less amazed by the multitude of different ways in which the game is played and more amazed by the consistency of the camaraderie that rugby evokes in those who play it.

By following the example of Australia’s 2003 World Cup organisers, the French have successful tied their hospitality and festival culture to the competition by getting small towns behind the foreign teams.

In 2003, Japan found in Townsville what Namibia and Georgia found in Launceston; unexpected hospitality and support.  This is exactly what Australia in Montpellier and New Zealand in Marseilles are finding this time around and it is exactly what I found at that happy policeman’s kitchen table in the depths of Australian country rugby.

It’s a great example of rugby administrators using what’s best about the game to make it even better and it’s a tradition I hope continues in world Cups to come.

By Garth Hamilton

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