I got a phone call from my brother last week, and as always we started talking about Rugby. For some reason we got talking on my lad, and whether he'd play Rugby when he was older. Now thats a toughie, on one hand I loved Rugby League, but reality is I've got a body of a pensioner a good 30 years before my time because of it. I thought that my Mum must have had the same thoughts when I was a kid, whether it was wise to let her chubby little lad go and have a rumble with a load of over lads for over an hour.
My brother had always been good a player, the sod was one of those annoying gifted players who whenever he gambled it would come off. He even gave himself his own nicknames "Captain Marvel", "Cape Wearing Centre" all the usual shite that you have to put up with when someone is naturally athletic. However I was not, my only true talent was the ability to shovel food down my mouth and occasionally I'd be able to fart on demand but that was about it.
So when I started playing Rugby League I was not what the coaches were probably hoping would be waddling over. Not helped by the fact I was playing for a team about 3 years older than me because there was no squad in my age group. So after a couple of training sessions and spending most of a Saturday morning trying to put a gumshield in mouth, I trundled off to my inevitable arse kicking.
The game I came on against was probably the best game for me, because the other team were complete crap. I came on at about 65 minutes on the left wing, we were about 70 points ahead at this stage and the aim was for me to get a few minutes under my belt with doing anything stupid or better still - breaking anything.
That was all going well until I looked at my opposite number, now I'm was no expert but I'm guessing the guy facing me was not a winger. He was as wide as he was tall (and he was fecking tall) and he looked more like 23 rather than 13. Their game plan was obvious, put the prop at wing and run at the little fat kid, fooking brilliant plan in fairness. They ran in 4 tries like that, and I must have looked like a complete retard trying to wrap my arms around the other lads legs. This went on until the rest of my team got a bit pissed off and decided to clean tubster out with the usual mental tackling that our 9 was famous for (his Dad used to give him 50p for each tackle until he put in 65 tackles in a game and he bankrupt him).
Tubster limped out the game, and we managed to run in a few more tries in the last few minutes to save my face. I look back at that game now, and I still remember it vividly, like a shit movie you've seen, like Megashark vs Giant Squid, it just stays in your head. But, in all my years since, I can't remember ever being dominated like that in a game again. The return leg 4 months later at their ground was infact an even bigger drubbing for "tubsters" team and I played a larger chunk in that game without doing anything stupid I even remember putting in some decent tackles.
So although I'll be bricking myself when it comes to my poor sprogs first game, I know in a few months he'll slowly start becoming that perfect balance of stupid and heroic that you get in a Rugby player. I look forward to that conversation when he comes back and goes "Dad I played shit today, I feel like such a moron" so I can tell him my story of how I started out as awful and years and years later I became "not-crap."
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