Joining Club Rugby / The Education of SeanWF - Part 4

You arrive for the first scratch match or "Trial game" on Saturday with a soul full of hope and great expectations of impressing your buddies with your newly honed skills.

Being Fourth grade you will of course be the first team to play.The entire squad will have assembled as well as an additional cohort of Junior AllBlacks and you will wait expectantly to fill one of the fifteen positions, any position, as long as you run on.

You will have been bouyed in that expectation by your coach's earnest assertions throughout the preseason that only those that train will be selected.

After an address of ten minutes, during which the coach will mostly limit himself to comparing the opposition to various parts of the female anatomy,casting aspertions on their legitimacy,and making curious, if inappropriate, comments about their sexual conduct, the coach will name the run on team.

You of course will not be included, but every Junior AllBlack who turns up on the day will.

Whilst still in a state of bewilderment you will be handed a tray of plastic bottles and a wet sponge and will be assigned the heavy responsibility of senior water boy.

Bemused and somewhat offended, you will observe the two jolly fat men make a beeline to two very similarly built individuals on the opposite team. They will shake hands heartily with their opposite number (but in the normal manner), slap each other on the back, share cigarettes and all the while be laughing and joking effusively together.

Stretch will, for the first time since you met him, have a look of grim determination on his face. The thirty kilo weakling will be filling the water bottles for you.

The referee will blow his whistle and the selected team will gather in a huddle,embacing each other like long lost brothers, let out a mighty roar which for all the world sounds like the death rattle of an expiring pachyderm, and run onto the field to assume their positions.

As despondent as you may feel at this point, do not succumb to ill founded dispair, for, as I will explain to you next time, you are still destined to enjoy your time in the sun.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5