Our Man in Europe/dave delacroix esq./ragazzimento No. 42: "This Sporting Life"...
"LEFTY" was the tallest of the (RUGBY) team. Steve Cousins - just back from Canada, age 13 - was the team's Captain star. We had Nigerian 3/4-back Leon Yawa, Derek Jones on Wing (both were frickin' greyhounds!), big Dickhead Starling on 2nd. row; Swallow-nest/Aston high school Rugger team, mid Sixties, positively unbeatable!.
I played Wing-forward, sometimes, Hooker... In a SCRUM? - you DO NOT "hook" the ball, you hook the OPPONENT'S shin/legs, and then...when he cries for his MOMMY? --you hook and back-kick the ball to your own team. Meantime, LEFTY, Steve Cousins and Dickhead Starling are pushing the SCRUM AGE opponents into the snow, slush and MUD.
This IMMORTAL game, heralded by my (West Riding), South Yorkshire team, all partaking; we exhausted our early TEENS with "home" games, "away" games, throughout ALL four seasons: We played - and WON - on fields of snow!
"Away" games, hosted at numerous celebrated institutions of Learning (Schools for Young Gentlemen in merry old England), we'd rugger-vanquish the FOE then Team-bus-it back to home base, drink SHANDY and sing every Brit-pop song we ever knew. Back to BRINSWORTH, back to ROTHERHAM, back to SHEFFIELD, exalted in hard won Pride (Our colors, incidentally, were Green and White)....
There were, WAS, IS, no shame in RUGGER pride.
c 2013/davedelacroix/lord borgo/ourmanineurope/april 5th./piacenza, italia, and that Sporting Life, so far away...:)
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