State of Origin Special - Derby Days

I made a promise that in 24 hours if I got over 300 views I'd post this earlier than planned. So cheers to everyone who's read my blog and for the guys and girls who've left me decent comments on twitter (@4thchoicecentre) its appreciatted.

So anyway, the State of Origin is tonight and my skyplus is all ready to record whats always been one of the best games. But why are games like this always better, why is Wigan vs St Helens always far better than Bradford vs Hull? There's something about derby's, the fact it gets your blood boiling, there's so much more at stake than just points. Call it what you want - bragging rights/pride/respect, whatever it is it makes players want to smash each other to pieces and its bloody entertaining to watch.

So I'm going to share with you three of my memories (or whats not been knocked out of me) of Derby Days I've played over the last 20 or so years of Amateur Rugby League, feel free to leave your comments at the bottom of your derby matches:

1. I had just started playing open age Rugby moving up from Junior and to be honest I was really enjoying it. I was playing out on the wing and the team I was playing for was a really good crack. Half way through the season we went to our local derby match away from home. Apparently one of our forwards used to play for them, which made matters worse. We pitched up and started getting changed, the floor was wet but it was chucking it down so we just thought it was because of that. It was only when one of the lads picked up his bag and smelt it that we figured out what it was........ The dirty gits had decided to piss all over the away changing rooms just before we arrived. They were laughing their heads off when we walked out to warm up.

2. When I was kid I used to play in the same team as my brother because there was no team my age. So I was again out on the wing as possibly the smallest player in the league. We went to a team in Manchester to play a local derby. It was minus 16, mid winter and there was about a foot of snow, we played anyway. One of the biggest problems was no one was tackling properly because we were all so frozen. Unlucky for my brother at full back, who must have made about 40 one on one tackles because the rest of us were too cold to tackle. Finally when we got back on the attack, our kid runs the ball in only to get high shotted. He stayed on his feet and kept going, only to run into another forearm, finally a third forward came flying in and nearly took his head clean off. That was the end of his game, although he still reminds me he put in more tackles than anyone else before getting knocked out.

3. Finally my last Derby memory involved the worst fighting I'd ever been in. I was only about 13 at the time, and for some reason the match turned ugly very early. The main instigator was a gobby little scrum half on the opposition who continually would go in for sly digs. Dropping knees, scratching, eye gouging etc etc. Throughout the match there must have been 18 individual punch ups, in the end the ref called time early. As usual the home team creates a tunnel with its players at the end of the game to clap the other team through, a nice way to end the game. However when the little scrum half from the other team came through last, we closed the tunnel at both ends and decided to all dive in on the wind up merchant. However whilst we were lumping ten bells out of their scrum half, none of us had noticed that the rest of his team had decided to gang up on our Captain who by now had pegged it across three football fields trying to get away.

Thanks again for taking the time to read through my blog, feel free to leave your comments at the bottom with your derby day matches. The blog will go out weekly every Monday, with any special ones going out again whenever I can skive off work long enough to write it!