Rugby clubs are the heart of the game
Roar Guru By Stillmissit, 11 Apr 2008 The Crowd is a Roar Guru
In reading the RIP grassroots rugby article by Cameron it got me thinking about my own rugby experiences all those years ago. What was it that attracted a fairly rough and tough working class boy to this world?
My reaction is it was the rugby clubs and the fun, atmosphere and the characters you met there. I thought that some of you might like to put down your reactions to clubs you have known and, if in this professional era, some of these clubs are lost then at least there might be a few memories that linger on.
My first club was a small club called Tonbridge (now called Tonbridge-Juddians) in Kent. I was asked to play by a friend from school days. At the time I was more interested in getting into a fight on a Saturday night than playing sport but I agreed to come along. I got a phone call from the club captain who said he would pick me up for training from home as I didn’t have a car. I lived on what Australians would call a housing commission estate and it was the roughest one in the town where I was born. Hughie Barkly turned up in an Aston Martin which embarrassed the hell out of me as all the other young toughies wanted to know if I had turned gay and my boyfriend was picking me up.
The club house was a wonder of Elizabethan timbers with girls’ knickers pinned to them. There were two bars, one called the Pansy room where the girls and wives preferred to drink. The club employed two full time stewards. Sydney and Albert both dressed in white waiters uniforms and they called you Sir (even me) and looked after the place. The club president, an old 1st world war soldier called Dudley LeMay, told me one night that at the outbreak of the great war all of Tonbridge’s 3 grades of players signed up together. Six of them came back alive.
On Saturday nights the stewards served a full cooked meal for all players and guests (opposition players). Then beer and more beer and songs and stories until the early hours then off to the local Indian restaurant or some party.
I left the UK and played in South Africa and the best club I ever played for was there. Villagers club in Cape Town is, to my mind, an institution. The rugby was serious but as soon as the game was over there was very little talk about the game. The socialising was amazing, the club would have had at least a couple of hundred people there after every home game and it seemed to me like a large very chatty family that all got on with one another. There were ex players some of them in their 70′s and a few ex Springboks who had played before apartheid when all the Villagers teams all had some coloured players in them. The girls always seemed dressed up to the nines for the night and the conversations and stories were so good sometimes I would have a date organised and forget to pick her up – try and talk your way out of that.
In NZ I played a season for a club called Linwood and although I didn’t enjoy the rugby in NZ, the club was interesting due to a player’s mum. Bruiser Brewer’s Mum was unbelievable – she would spend all day cooking for us players and the normal move was to finish the showers, have a couple of beers and boring talk analysing the game or how to fix cars, and then off to Bruiser’s place to eat. She had the house full of food all beautifully prepared and laid out in a smorgasbord. I wish she had been my mum.
In Australia I played at Gordon and although we had a lot of fun and I got banned a couple of times (like most players) it was a bit clicky for new players and it took a little while to get to know everybody. I have some good friends from those days and the club dances and functions were a hoot with ‘depth charges’ all round (a Blue drink with something white and deadly at the bottom to be drunk in one gulp) or drinking the yard of ale glass in one go. There were always some nice girls around on Saturday nights and we all got on pretty well.
The club I enjoyed playing against in Sydney was Norths – great atmosphere and a very good laugh until they banned all the first grade players one year. Easty Beasties were always a good social club with good food and good guys and Warringah were a great singing club with Harry Rainbow leading the chorus.
I wonder if this sort of thing still goes on at rugby clubs. I hope so.
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May 21st 2008 @ 11:16pm
steve rainbow said | May 21st 2008 @ 11:16pm | Report comment
Great stories, Harry Rainbow is my older brother and his mate Dick Collie played at Southend together and Dick played first grade at Villagers and he rated it as a great club. As for singing and after match revelries,Sutton in Surrey was always a bloody tussle followed by several beers forfeits and singing. Best year was everyone 1st XV and 3rds all butt naked by 6.30
! Grand larceny at a variety of clubs,happily the memories last longer than the trophies.Ken Light ( the Legend) stealing chucks off the rotisserie while us Colts stood in awe at his dexterity,his singing of the Mad Monk and David Leslie’s rendition of the Hole in the Elephants bottom remain a delightful memory.Listening to Hamburg Rugby club and the translation of truly filthy German sings was a great treat on my first tour with the “B” XV as a 16 year old. There has also been some hard rugby and hard drinking in the intervening years but no matter where or with what side Rugby is the greatest sporting fellowship.
May 22nd 2008 @ 9:05am
Spiro Zavos said | May 22nd 2008 @ 9:05am | Report comment
Stillmissit
You’ve brought back memories from the distant past when, as a newly married man in the 1970s in London, I played social rugby for the Osterley club, at Hounslow near Ealing where we lived. Our captain was a great chap, a Welshman called Roy Evans, our hooker’, a man who seemed to be incredibly old at age about 40 plus. Roy loved rugby. He called his house ‘Whineray’ after the All Blacks captain. He loved his scrums. He generally played in the middle of the field not moving much until scrum-time when his arms would shoot up in the air and he’d call out, ‘Here we are boyos,’ and settled down for a minute or so of vigorous pushing and shoving.
Osterley used to be a strong club. The NZ Kiwis, the famous Army side after the War, played their apparently. It was sliding down into obscurity by the time I arrived. A lot of Welshmen, working for the BBC, played in the club. We had a very strong social team which lost only one game. That game was played against the British Army parachuters who had just come back from a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. The game was played at Aldershot where an IRA bomb had been set off a month or so earlier.
I knew we were in trouble when the Army side virtually sprinted to the rugby field which was about a mile away from the changing shed. They thrashed us. We won our remainding matches but I was forced into retirement when I was late-tackled by a fiery flanker. I looked up at him and said: ‘You’d have to be a NZer to tackle someone late in a social match.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ he told me.
At Osterley we had sausages and beans set out on long tables in the clubroom. Bands like Kenny Ball and his Jazz Band played. Wives, mistresses, players and hangers-on, gold old boys, old farts, Aussies, NZers, Welshmen we alll had a terrific time.
The English might be relatively hopeless at rugby at the international level (at least against SH countries) but they surely know how to make the social side of the game the most enjoyable experience you are ever likely to have!
May 22nd 2008 @ 9:59am
stillmissit said | May 22nd 2008 @ 9:59am | Report comment
Steve Rainbow
Great to hear from another Rainbow. It seems that these tracks are deep and rich that we all followed in those days. Singing and drinking with good company is one of the great things that can happen to a young man.
One of our best laughs was in France on a trip and the local mayor welcomed us at the dinner after the first game. We all got pissed on wine of course and the Mayors wife stood up and made a speech which we didnt understand a word of, at the end she pulled her blouse apart and showed us her assetts to a roar of applause from all there. Then the home team did the Elephants Walk you know the song where they are all naked and attached by handkerchiefs held through their legs and we responded with Jolly Jack or something equally interesting.
Another story from that trip was a masterpeice. On the trip over on the ferry John Pilcher over breakfast said ‘watch this boys”, he took his prunes and custard and put them in his hankie. He then went up to a group of French men looking very unwell and then made as if he was throwing up in his hankie. He did this about 10 times and there was about 100 french people all hanging over the side of the ferry and we had barely left dock and the sea was flat as a pancake.
Our lives would have been vastly different without rugby.
May 22nd 2008 @ 10:10am
stillmissit said | May 22nd 2008 @ 10:10am | Report comment
Spiro
I remember Osterley as being a strong club and there was a large number of Kiwi’s and Aussies playing in England in the late 60′s and early 70′s we had several who played for my Pommie team. They seemed to specialise in chicken catching as a job because it was all over by 10 am and they had the rest of the day to do whatever. There was an Aussie who played for us called Turnbull and one game he got so incenced with the ref he was going to kill him and chased him all over the ground after the match and was lucky not to be banned for life.
You also reminded me that I used to play for Whitworths Brewery along with a several Aussies and Kiwi’s on Sunday afternoons. I was lucky to escape without becoming a hopeless drunk as there was always 2 barrels on offer after the game.
Good days with good people.