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Thread: Mining a rich seam of rugby

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    Champion KenyaQuin's Avatar
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    Mining a rich seam of rugby

    Mining a rich seam of rugby
    By Chico Harlan Mining a rich seam of rugby | The Daily Telegraph

    March 31, 2008 12:00am

    TWENTY-FOUR hours before the Cobar Camels would travel to Bourke for their first rugby match of the season, one of the Camels' two coaches, Tony Ellison, wrapped up a training session by addressing his team - a roster whose best performances in the year prior had come exclusively at the pub.

    "Don't go crazy on the p... tonight," Ellison told the guys. "Let's change the culture here."

    Some 15 Camels, ages ranging from 17 to 50, stood in a loose circle on the rugby field just outside town. The last lines of sunlight had just dipped behind the oval's rickety grandstand, painted with a camel and the words, "Desert Rugby".

    The Camels listened to Ellison and nodded their heads, saying nothing. For the moment, Ellison's speech opposed 50 years of tradition; Cobar's rugby union club was generally dedicated, often ill-fated, but always well-lubricated.

    "Listen," Ellison continued. "I know I'm hypocritical. Many times I'd drink right up until kickoff. But that was dumb. I hurt myself and my team. We are here to win and we're not going to win unless we change."

    More nodding. The other coach, Greg Black, stepped forward and revealed a burst of good news. The team had a full side for Bourke, 15 guys, because enough miners didn't have to work. "But," he said, "we're short a prop and a second-rower. So if you know anybody, bring them along."

    The Camels headed back to town on this night, a Friday, feeling emboldened for the 2008 season. In the previous session, fundamentals looked strong. The coaches preached about basic rugby, ball protection and scrum structure.

    At least for a few hours, the Camels provided little indication of their predicament: they finished 1-13 in 2007. Old legends referred to the current group as "a bunch of sheilas". They shared their oval with a blind horse named George. The foremost team rule required players to jointly consume one bottle of Brown Muscat wine before games and another bottle at halftime.

    Unlike the rival rugby league club in town, the Camels provide no pay for players. During the annual league-union match last April, the league guys beat the Camels, 66-5, a misery that could only be medicated by large doses of Tooheys Old at the New Occidental Pub.

    During the club's early years, a revered era of co-existing misbehaviour and dominance, the Camels established the writ-large standards that modern men could only die trying to replicate. To fund a 1963 exhibition trip to New Zealand, players headed to the bush to hunt feral pigs and goats. In 1965, players built their own clubhouse, laying bricks by hand and implanting some with empty beer bottles. Between 1967 and 1976, Cobar won six Western Plains premierships. Some players commuted a 400km round trip just to attend training.

    In the past 30 years, though, Cobar have won the grand final of their competition - normally comprised of eight clubs - just once. The primary reason for Cobar's existence, mining, provides a primary reason for the Camels' struggles.

    Cobar is a boom-or-bust town, its population (4918, per 2006 census data) dependent on the price of the copper and gold buried beneath the red soil. Some 75 per cent of the rugby club work in one of Cobar's three mines, which require rotations of four 12-hour shifts followed by four off days.

    Those who elect to play rugby, then, opt for extreme sacrifice. Some Camels emerge at 7pm from a work shift in sauna temperatures at 900m underground then head straight to footy practice. Two contract workers recently forfeited $17,000 apiece in work just to make every game. You've gotta love that.

    When Black, 43, the Camels' all-time leader in games, was named coach this year, he went a month without telling his wife. She learned the news when she read it in the paper.

    The oldest Camel, Butch Eves, 50, a CSA mine operator, suffered a shoulder injury last year that ended his playing career but perhaps preserved his marriage. "My wife was going to leave me if I played again," he said. Still, he trains with the team because he likes to bust heads.

    "The mines haven't helped the club," says Peter Payne, a former Camel who is organising the club's 50th anniversary celebration in June. "Everything is more regulated now. You play your sport on the off time. Initially the mines were lenient, but not now. It affects us dramatically. One week we'll have 15 blokes playing and two weeks later we'll have bloody near a new 15."

    Stress about such matters is mitigated by the team's role as a social club - an acknowledgement that sport, at least in outback NSW, doubles as communal ritual.

    Blokes with black dirt under their fingernails drink "black beer" at the New Occidental, the Camels' de facto home. They wear footy jumpers, which they call their "drinking uniforms". The club's goodwill towards the town indicates its expertise: at the Cobar Easter Show, the rugby guys run the bar. At the annual music festival, they run the bar. At the Louth races, they run the bar. Incidentally, the Camels are no longer in debt.

    By Saturday, Cobar had all the tools necessary for Bourke. The club had a renewed spirit, thanks to an infiltration of debutants, including a new town butcher and a Kiwi. They also had a loaded bus, packed up front with 24 bottles of water, nine Diet Cokes, four ice bags, several kits of medical supplies and 156 cans of beer - more than 10 per man - all for the trip home.

    Before the bus began its 160km march up the Kidman Way, Black stood at the front of the vehicle and explained a few rules. "No sculling on the bus this year, guys," he said. "And no spirits on the bus, too. Sorry, but that's a rule."

    About two hours later, though, the team arriving to play Bourke - a reliably strong side - had borrowed a veil of professionalism.

    New jumpers, yellow with a green V across the chest, lent a look of formidability. Players talked about winning, about how, with so many mates unable to play because of shiftwork at the mines, they too needed to view the match as a job.

    Evidently, their job on this late afternoon required a beating. The Camels' forwards struggled with technique and drew penalties. Bourke scored three tries in the first quarter and never relented.

    The Camels showed some fight, and even some flashes of genuine potential, but by match's end, they walked off with an assortment of bruises (banged knees, bloody foreheads), having scored just one try to Bourke's nine.

    "We played well in patches," Black said to the guys before they left Bourke. "Bourke is a good team."

    The good news: this had only been a trial match; the season won't begin for another month.

    The better news: the Camels demonstrated clear improvement from last year, when they lost to the same team, 112-3.

    And the best news: Black, still standing on the grass oval, XXXX can already in hand, glanced at the horizon with a devious grin. "No matter how bad you get beat," he said, "you get a bus trip back home." At ten beers a pop, wouldn't mind being on that bus either.

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    Veteran BLR's Avatar
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    Brilliant story.

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    Champion KenyaQuin's Avatar
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    I thought so too BLR.

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    For those who don't know Chico Harlan is an American Journalist here in Sydney on an exchange program. This article is just another example of his brilliant style.

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