The one thing no-one can ever deny about Rugby League is that its a physical game. Tackling in Rugby is similar to driving two cars straight into each other, except the crumple zone is normally your rib cage. I've never been a player who could put in the big hits every week, I've recieved a few over the years, it was normally left to the forwards and my cape-wearing Brother to do that type of stuff. However there were those rare occassions when I was able to play above my normal standard.
When I got back playing Rugby after my knee injury (see last weeks Blog) I went back to my old club to find them struggling to put out a 13 and sat at the bottom of the league. Although this led to some of the worst drubbing of my career, I actually enjoyed this year the most. The 13 we had was the same 13 every week, our oldest player was 24 and we had no actual coach. Training had at best 6 players and all that we could do was work on skills (tackling, passing) and fitness.
We travelled to the top of the league with these 13 lads and I ended up out on the wing as usual and we turned up to find that not only did they have a full 17 but they actually had three forwards from their Premier team that had dropped down because their game had been called off. We started off as usual, they crossed for a try early on and pretty much kept us in our half. Their kicks were always high, leading to everytime I caught the ball I was boomed straight away.
Half time came and we were only 12-0 down but our fullback had limped off and our only close attempt at scoring came with a truly shit attempt at a drop goal. However what gave us a lift was the sight of their coach giving "top of the league" an absolute bollocking. According to him we'd bossed them in defence and made them look average at best. The worlds shortest team talk ever (my brother telling us all to not let them score) and we were off again.
Second half was a different story, they were now running complicated plays right down the middle of us. Our forwards were knackered and I was getting increasingly getting pissed off at having to chase their forwards 40 yards down the pitch when they broke through. The thing was no-one was coming down my wing meaning I had no-one to take my frustration out on. An added bonus was the heckling from the touchline, the rest of their Premier team had turned up to watch the game and were basically taking the piss from the sidelines.
At this point I was well and truly miffed, I was piss-wet-through, getting beaten, and had not run in the ball in the entire second half. Then all of a sudden they decided to come down my wing, it was the fifth tackle and they'd gone for a power play. This means that instead of kicking they'd run it in. Their Premier Prop came steaming towards me with about 5 players in support. To be quite honest I don't remember what happened next, my brother tells me it was the funniest thing he's ever seen. Apparently I ran pult pelt into him and as he went into pass I then flew in shoulder first and absolutely cleaned out the forward leaving the ball to bobble forward. Their prop was dragged off the pitch looking back at the 12 stone winger half his size that had practically knocked him out. For the next ten minutes we were on top, whether it was our team were lifted or theirs went downhill, I don't know. But we managed to actually get into their half of the pitch a couple of times I even got to run in the ball!
The problem was I got the ball because my centre massively high tackled a forward. The referee didn't blow (perhaps out of mercy for us) and I picked up the ball to run it in. I might as well have been wearing a pink tutu and a t-shirt saying "I've had all your mums". To a chorus of "Get him fooking banged" I ducked the first two high shots but then got cracked on the jaw, instant payback, as I lay on the floor trying to find my chin about 4 of their players then piled on top of me. I had never been so popular on a Rugby Pitch.
We ended the match 34 - 0, and despite not even getting close to scoring its still one of the games I still look back at and enjoy. The 13 lads I went to Rochdale with were genuine mates and despite getting battered we actually enjoyed the game. We could pretend that with a few subs it would have been a different game, but it didnt matter. I'll take that memory and remember that one day, despite never repeating it again, I actually managed to clean out a prop.
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