Rhys Bosley thought some of you might be interested in this after a post I wrote on his recent thread.
I was born in 1947 to a working class family about 30 miles south of London and lived in what Australians call a housing commission estate. My father and mother both worked two jobs but sometimes it was not enough to put food on the table for the four of us – on those days they didn’t eat dinner.
Now, enough of that emotional tripe. Let’s get onto my rugby life.
I played rugby at school, which was a basic government school. I only played one year as I got a butchers delivery round, which paid me 50c a day (about $5 today), which was more than my pocket money (0.00) and was okay with me.
I left school at 15 and started an apprenticeship which my mother thought was astoundingly wonderful. I got into a street fighting gang and we went out looking for fights on Saturday nights. I handed a fair bit out and got beaten up occasionally.
I got into a fight at a dance with a guy who had beaten me up as a kid and they had trouble bringing him round after I knocked him out. Somebody said I’d killed him and that they had called the cops but he regained consciousness.
A few months later, a guy held an axe to my throat. One time, a great friend of mine got shot through the arm after a gun was put to my head, saving my life. So, my options were: going to jail, being killed or changing my ways.
Around this time, a mate asked me if I wanted to play rugby for a local club, I hesitated as I had no transport and it was five miles away. He said, “I’ll get the captain to pick you up.”
Imagine the shock to the neighbours when the captain turned up in an Aston Martin sports car. They were all peeping out of their net curtains and my mother was shocked.
I played one game in third grade, two games in second grade and then at 19 I was in first grade. The other players at the club all spoke with a ‘plummie’ accent as it was called in those days and they all knew my working-class background as soon as I opened my mouth.
Mostly they had been to expensive private schools. One guy went to Eton and some were at uni which was rare in those days. They were mostly upper-middle-class kids or farmer’s sons.
I enjoyed the games very much but the other guys seemed a bit remote to me and although they would talk to me, there were few I could call friends. At the end of the first season, I found I preferred these guys (who I expected to hate) far more than the gang I had hung around with.
Then out of the blue, Clive started talking to me. He was the son of an industrialist who had lost his business in northern England. We had great fun together.
One time on the way back from a game in London, we stopped at a very smart dinner dance club where Clive insisted on having a drink. He skidded to a stop and we got out, up to the bar and ordered beers. The manager came out and said, “Is that your car, sir?” to which Clive said, “Yes, it is.”
“I want you in it and out of here immediately,” said the manger, to which Clive pulled out his notebook and asked: “What’s your bloody name?”
“I bought this place yesterday and on Monday you’re out of a job,” he sneered until Clive told him his name, then he nearly fell over himself in grovelling apologies. As a working-class kid who had seen more than his fair share of this, I laughed my head off.
I gained more friends within the club and although I had no ambition at all, it became clear to me that to be more like my teammates was far better than walking around with a chip on my shoulder hoping for the Communist Revolution.
Clive told me on one occasion that I could make something of myself but not in the UK as it was too old school tie and my working-class background and lack of education would always hold me back.
Over the next couple of years, I had a wonderful time in the club playing and socialising and several of those ‘plummie’ upper-class twits became my friends. I left the UK in 1971 and bummed around the world, playing rugby in South Africa for a couple of seasons and New Zealand for a season, and ended up in Australia. Got a job working for an American IT company, married, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Rugby took me from being a rough working-class kid to a sophisticated old bastard with a large library, an interest in classical music, wine cellar, collections of glass and Japanese Cloisonne, and a reasonable ability to banter with friends.
A deep-felt thank you to that pommie rugby club and Clive, particularly. Without their influence, my life could have ended up in hell.
So, I went from a boy to a man in the best possible way and it was all down to rugby and the deep friendships it generates.
Clive died in April this year, leaving hundreds of millions of pounds to charity, some of which to help poor boys with their education, including the arts, music etc.
I was one of his first acts of kindness.
Ankle-tapped Waterboy
Roar Rookie
Thank you StillMissIt. This has been a privilege to read.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
BF, The truth is often the victim of political lies. This from Wiki: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Monorchid
Roar Rookie
This is an extraordinary read SMI. Thanks for sharing it with The Roar community. And don't worry about your standard of education. This is a very, very well written piece. I'm younger than you as a 49er, and I came off the streets. But your story makes me a milksop. You should consider writing a book about your life because I'm sure you'd find publisher. Thanks again.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
OK, If you think we are all the same, then you have no idea what's happened in the world. You should read something about why we were so successful, why we were so greedy and why, when we had what we needed, we were so generous. Go read your history assuming you are of European ancestry? you may be surprised. Q. Who stopped slavery? Q. Who instituted education for the poor? Q. Who built our philosophy on Socrates and why him? Q. Who worked out that it was a good thing to separate our anus from our mouths? Q. The Greeks worked out the distance from the earth to the sun, how many other nations worked that out at that time ~ 500bc? Q. Read the Magna Carta and wonder at the basics of it. Be thankful for what our culture has given you and try not to destroy it.
OtakiCraig
Roar Rookie
We’ll all be human beings then
SB
Guest
Thats good advice, I hope they listened! but that's the problem isn't it... I was pulling pints in a pub in London a while back and one of the everyday regulars said to me "I don't know how you do it, I grew up two streets up that way and I live two streets down that way, and here you are on the other side of the world... I couldn't live anywhere else!" as he finished his 7th pint and went home to his kids... I wanted to ask him if he thought what he was doing was actually living? but I don't think he would have gotten where i was coming from... Cheers mate, and all the best to you and yours on your journey!
stillmissit
Roar Guru
SB, as I said to a young relative of mine this morning, 'take the hard road, the soft road leads nowhere'. Glad you made it out. I went back to the UK in the late 90's and was surprised at how few of the roughies I hung around with got out. They are still drinking in the local, most are ex builders labourers and a couple were odds and sods guys. One was a total alco and one had died. Good luck to you, onwards and upwards!!!
SB
Guest
Brilliant read Mr Missit. And congratulations on successfully climbing your personal mountain! I haven't got to the top of mine just yet, but I'm well on the way... Growing up around some unsavoury types in Wellington (my Father was a social worker who had us staying on the K' street Marae for a while, great place to learn to steal cars and stock for clothes!) and developing some less then productive pain management habits (remnants of a childhood car related unpleasantness) had me on a similar trajectory as your younger self. Though I never had the privilege of actually playing the game (the aforementioned car accident saw to that) at the point when I was starting to look for a way out I happened to be following the '07-'15 ABs on their path up from rockbottom, through self-reflection, through understanding and growth to eventual self-mastery and triumph. What they went through mirrored my own journey so well, I ended up gaining many insights and understandings that became literal lifesavers for me... as well as a lifelong love of the game! While I'm not yet where I want to be (still working on that wine cellar!), reading stories like this from others who have made it, and the inspiring power of rugby's great wisdom is both motivation and invigoration! Thank you.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Controlled aggression as opposed to righteous indignation, flipping to rage. There are so many advantages in rugby for young men, particularly as I always saw it as a substitute war, there is no other sport quite like it. The complexity also mirrors war where plans get destroyed, where courage with strength can win over against huge odds.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
Physicality, skills, mental stress and teamwork, matched against your opponents.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Sport and particularly rugby union teaches you to win gracefully and lose with acceptance. These two lessons are maybe not enough but they are a good start.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Carlos, I am deeply grateful to my father, my uncle, Clive and all those who made friends with me. I am also deeply grateful to the women in my life who fixed my emotional 'issues'. I never expected any help at all, yet good men and women have showered me in kindness and love. Amazing looking back on it..
Muglair
Roar Rookie
I am right at the end of the boomer years and I am not so sure that anyone will be getting wiser, no matter how old they get. Many Australians would not have any concept of your early life where England was still on its knees after the war. It has been a pretty easy ride here and there have been no consequences for the direction we have taken. As I write: I do not think we have needed to be resilient, and we have dismantled society's mechanisms to support us when we need it, for reasons of convenience and self-interest.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
I think the real benefit, and this is not just rugby, is mixing with generations of men that you now have a common interest with. They understand the challenges you face as a young man much better than you, and much better than they did as the same age. Outside of sport there are few opportunities apart from steady work in a good environment. Maybe there are, but my young life after school was dominated by a winter and summer sport so don't really know. My son played soccer though and I did not get the same vibe there.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Mug, they also need the challenge and the idea that they can build something better and that someone or something is greater than they are.
stillmissit
Roar Guru
Mug, when these stupid people get to be older and understand more they may realise how nonsensical it was and the damage they have done. I speak to the occasional baby boomer who thinks what we did to family life, trust, introducing a drug culture and the destruction of religion was all worth it. As a boomer myself, all I see are millions of self-centred people living alone and dying alone.
Carlos the Argie
Roar Guru
This is such a terrific story! Congratulations for your ability and intelligence to realize that you had to change. Understanding that someone we are is wrong, something we do or engage in is wrong requires a lot of insight and honesty. Honesty with ourselves is not that easy. You should be proud of what you accomplished, but more than anything, you should be proud of figuring it out so young and grateful to the people that not only trusted you, but supported you all the way.
Busted Fullback
Roar Rookie
I’m a retired teacher, that’s right a baby boomer. Hopefully the education system will finally understand the folly of ‘everyone gets a participation certificate’ and start teaching real history being neither apologist nor pacifist. We all can learn lessons from the past - they learn to value and honour themselves, their families, their friends /team mates, their country, the opportunities it presents and what they can do to make it a better country. Rugby can be a part of that.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
Sadly I think we are failing as a society to provide some certainty for the future for young men. Compounded by do gooders insisting the answer is to make life easier, instead of giving them the tools and the opportunities to use them. How can we expect angry and frustrated young men to respect a society like that? I wouldn't. The days of scalliwags getting a clip over the year from the local cop and being dragged off to the nearest police boys or sporting club are long gone. The men waiting for them with a life's experience of helping those kids must also be much smaller in number.
Muglair
Roar Rookie
My great great grandfather went into the factories at 8 and the mines a bit later, can't remember exactly. He came to Australia and became a very wealthy man, exact whereabouts of wealth now unknown :crying: Was a great benefactor to education and a lot of other things when alive, and took care of his employees. He established a fund for the university education of students unable to afford fees over a hundred years ago where the residual has just been applied for a building project. One scholarship remains of 12 bequeathed to a university in his home country. Yet the creation of a memorial project on his former land brought the trolls out in force saying disgusting things about a man they had never heard of.