The date 19 October 1993 is not seminal in rugby history. I only remember it because it was the day Jeremy Goss scored that volley against Bayern Munich. I was watching with my right arm in a cast. Hours earlier a rolling maul rolled all the way on to my arm and snapped my ulna. I lay on the floor while play continued. It was freezing. It was always freezing when we played rugby. Eventually the game stopped and Mr Toy came over.
“Can you wiggle your fingers? Good it’s not broken … Now go in and get changed.” I gingerly yanked off my muddy purple shirt and put it back in my locker, managed to get my school uniform on and then waited for my mum to pick me up. The pain was mitigated by the delight of: a) having a cast (pretty cool); and b) knowing I’d miss a whole term of that terrible sport.
Rugby teachers never seemed sympathetic. It was all very alpha – all about being a man. Any slight injury would get the same treatment from Mr Baker: “Rub adub dub, there’s a good lad.” It didn’t even rhyme.
If I’m honest, I never gave it a chance. We are our parents’ children and my dad had no interest. His medical background meant he just wanted me to stay away from the scrum. That’s where necks broke. Every time the scrum bound together I would flinch. The closest I got was on Jeremy Goss day, when the regular scrum-half wasn’t there.
Everything about it upset me. Before I’d even seen a pitch, I’d already burnt my mouth trying to mould my gum shield after dipping the generic model into boiling water. The grass was bumpy. I have always had a deep mistrust of a sport where the ball doesn’t bounce routinely.
Those shouts are etched in my memory: “Ready, ready, ready, ready, NOW!” as the ball was thrown into the scrum. Being screamed at to fall on the floor in front of 30 sets of studs, the dread of standing under a high ball and shouting mark in the vain hope someone might stop hurling themselves at you.
School rugby was introduced at 11 years old – precisely the time where one person had reached puberty. Each side had one tall person for lineouts. The rest of us just did our own thing. The main aim was to never, ever get the ball. It was quite a skill to avoid possession, of course you couldn’t tell anyone that was the plan. I wonder now quite how many people on a school rugby pitch were doing the same thing – playing shadow rugby – moving out of the way at just the right time. If only we could have been honest with each other. The others could have had a decent game of sevens and we could have got a football out or gone inside for clarinet practice.
Sometimes it was unavoidable. At outside centre you could get away with a quick ball outside or a kick for touch. But sometimes the forwards were on you, a compilation of evil Lord of the Rings characters – too tall, too squat, too round. Onwards they marched. They wanted what you had. “My precious,” they’d shout. On one occasion I just turned round and ran towards my own try line.
At 16 I made my peace. I left for a footballing sixth form. Rugby had gone. We wouldn’t miss each other. And we’d both cope.
Until university, of course. Even if you didn’t play, you were aware of their presence. Like a human bag of King Edward potatoes, taking all in their path, their ears going in all directions – drinking each other’s vomit out of shoes, dabbling in alien things like protein shakes and rowing machines. Occasionally a South African would arrive, five times the size of any human I’d ever seen.
Even at the elite level, rugby always seemed muddy. So much mud. And the players, your Chilcotts, your Beaumonts, your Dusty Hares, looking very much like middle-aged men from law firms. They often were middle-aged men from law firms – but no one told you that. Of course, occasionally some brilliance emerged that could permeate my blinkered world. Players who looked like they were playing a different game altogether, or looked like they could be footballers – Serge Blanco, Jonathan Davies, Brian O’Driscoll.
There are moments that transcend a sport. Jonah Lomu’s Speedball II approach, running through, rather than around the English defence in 1995. Jonny Wilkinson’s kick – “It’s over … it’s over …” screamed Iain Robertson.
It’s to my detriment that I have fought against appreciating a sport that offers so much. Only during the Lions tour of New Zealand in 2017 did I honestly give it my full attention. I’ve needed two decades of distance from the game. The rugby we are watching now seems to defy physics. The relentless physicality is one thing. But these athletes combine that power with an extraordinary speed of hand and speed of thought.
There will (hopefully) be much more detailed and learned previews of the game on other pages in this newspaper. But an England victory over New Zealand on Saturday would be truly exceptional. The beauty of sport is what it does to us, where it takes us emotionally. I won’t feel sick before kick-off. If England win, I’ll be happy but I won’t be desperately trying to “skip ad” on YouTube as I routinely do to watch that final ball of the super over against the All Blacks’ cricketing counterparts.
If England lose, I won’t be bereft. I won’t lie awake thinking about the Croatia football team – seriously why didn’t they get tired? They were meant to be tired.
But for those of us for whom rugby is that sport, is that thing that takes you away, that thing you still daydream of doing for a living despite the fact you’re 56, I wish you nothing but luck. I know how you feel, even if I won’t feel like that at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning. It will just be nice to watch an England semi-final without the stress.
