I used to play rugby at school. They didn't give me the ball much, because I didn't have any ball handling skills. I mostly just used to knock people over and dive around on the floor getting the ball back, and when I did I'd give it to someone else to do something with it.
I probably played about 100 games of rugby when I was at school. I can't remember them all now, but there are things I do remember. Some of the games were 30 years ago, so it's not surprising the memories are a bit vague. But there are 3 main factors at work in the games I do remember.
I remember the games we won against teams we usually lost to, I remember the games which we won in the last minute and I remember the amazing goal kicking of Graham Tyler.
For example, we used to regularly lose to Ampleforth College and Welbeck College. In the six years we played them we only beat them once each. When I was in the lower sixth I used to play for the school's 2nd XV. We weren't good enough to be in the first team, and because we weren't as important as them we didn't have to take it as seriously.
All the different age school teams used to play the same school on the same day, about half of them at home and half away, so you never got to watch the teams play that you weren't in.
I can't remember why they were there, but for some reason when we played Ampleforth that year, the first team weren't playing and they came to watch us. So we had basically about 20 people cheering us on. It's amazing how much noise 20 people can make, it's the closest I've ever been to playing in front of a crowd. It must be incredible to play in front of a whole stadium, although if you're England these days, that doesn't seem to help.
Anyway, spurred on by the crowd, we actually beat Ampleforth. I think the score was 15-9 but I could have misremembered that. What I do remember is that we were winning 9-8 at half time. I promised I'd buy Rhys Hughes a pint if he scored a try and he did right at the end of the first half, and that was when I really started to believe we might win. The result was in the balance almost to the end of the match, and then we gave the ball to Mick the Miller. That wasn't his real name. He was really called Jon Hargreaves. He was absolutely tiny, so I don't think he was any good at tackling, but he was called Mick the Miller after a greyhound. I can still remember near the end of the match watching him from a long way away as he ran away from the Ampleforth defence and over the try line. No-one could get near him. Ampleforth teams were always massive and because it was a boarding school they used to cheat by being able to practise a lot more often than we could in a day school. And we used to lose to them every year, until that one. Years of frustration, and of not being good enough disappeared in that instant.
For some reason, it's not fashionable these days to let children lose. I don't know why. Losing fosters determination and a will to win, and once in a while, when you win against the odds, it more than makes up for all the defeats.
Another game I remember was playing away at Giggleswick. Not only was the pitch on the side of a massive hill, but there was a force 10 gale blowing down it. It was pretty irrelevant who was the better team, because whoever was playing downhill was going to score all the points. It was pretty clear that whoever had the advantage of the slope in the first half was going to need to build up a massive lead and then defend it in the second half against the wind.
At the break we were only winning 10-0 which we knew wasn't going to be enough. And sure enough Giggleswick clawed back our advantage and with about a minute to go we were losing 12-10. And then after spending the whole half under our own posts, we managed to defy the wind and the hill and the other team and get up to the other end of the pitch and Bill Barker managed to stand up for long enough to fall over their try line in the corner with the ball, and we were back in the lead.
And then Graham Tyler kicked the conversion from the touchline, using the wind to banana it over the posts and we'd won 16-12. And there's no better feeling in sport.
Well, I say it was Graham. Memory can play tricks on you, that kick could have been taken by Andrew Axon, Graham was probably playing for the first team then. I assumed it was Graham because it was the kind of thing he would have done. I'll have to ask him. But there's a good reason, why I would remember it was him, even if it wasn't.
I didn't always get selected for the school rugby team, mostly because I wasn't good enough. Quite often I was a non-playing reserve. In those days it wasn't the girly game it is today. You could only put subs on if someone was injured, you couldn't take people off because they were tired. That was kind of the point of being fit, that you could keep going at the end.
There was one game I didn't play in, against John Smeaton which we won 21-16. There were 3 tries each and the difference between the teams was that Graham kicked all our kicks whereas they missed theirs. One particular conversion was from right on the touchline, and it was from the wrong side for a right footed kicker (if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry, it's a rugby thing). The thing I remember is not just that it went over, but the body language of the whole team, who cheered and jumped up in the air as it went over. I wouldn't have seen it if I'd been on the pitch, but I could see them all from where I was stood.
Why do I remember that kick? Well, to put it into perspective, this is schoolboy rugby I'm talking about. These were not professionals. We used to practice once a week during double games on a Tuesday afternoon and we had a quick runaround one lunchtime a week as well, which was necessarily short because we also had to fit in getting a school dinner in that hour. And Graham was always practising. He used to practice kicking, after we'd all packed in (maybe he took packed lunches, I'm not sure). Sometimes I used to watch him practisiing his kicks out of the window, and the thing was, they nearly always went through the middle of the posts.
But even knowing that about him, it was still amazing that the kick against John Smeaton went over. The pitch was so clarted up with 80s mud, and the ball was so wet that it would have been like kicking a pumpkin.
And that's why I remember it, and that's why I remember Mick the Miller's try, and Bill Barker's against Giggleswick. Because it wasn't likely to have happened. All the games we won, when we were supposed to, against teams we were better than, and all the kicks that went over from in front of the posts, I've forgotten.
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