Joining Club Rugby / The Education of SeanWF - Part 2
After your introduction to your new friends, you will be invited to take part in some fitness work.
This is a form of exercise which is calculated: A- to give the coach an opportunity to have a cigarette without setting a bad example for you , and,B-to tire you out to the extent that you will be too exhausted to give any thought as to what remote connection this might have to playing a ball sport.
At this time of the year fitness work will consist of a gentle 6 kilometre jog along a pre determined route which is explained to everyone but you.
After the first kilometre you will lose sight of the two jolly fat men who will have merged into the distant horizon at an alarming pace, and you will not have noticed Stretch, who will have let you start ahead of him and promptly
snuck behind a bush and then ambled back into the club bar for a reviver.
Meanwhile the 30 kilo weakling (also behind you ) will have collapsed with a dose of the vapours after the first hundred yards and be taken inside the nearest house by an elderly spinster who will call his mother to collect him.
That will leave you free to continue jogging for an indeterminate period of time (usually about an hour) until it dawns on you that you are hopelesly lost
and you ask a man who is watering his lawn in the gloom the way back.
An hour and a half later you will arrive back at the club grounds to discover the coach and the two jolly fat men are in the changing room sharing a carton purchased with last year's team funds.
Stretch will be in the club house, in an advanced state of intoxication, arguing the merits of the Wallabies with an equally inebriated gentleman of unbelievable girth who apparently is of the opinion "thet the All Blecks will pley Sowd Efrica' in the world cup final.
At about this time you will hear a telephone ring, and will be told a garbled message to the effect that the weakling's mother has called to say that she has now returned home with him from the hospital and that he will be at training on Thursday without fail...
From here on your conversion into a rugby player will take a more serious turn, but that will have to wait until next time.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
