A Day with the Saintly Fat Boys at Henley

Sinbads whirlybird
By Ballagher
August 16 2003

After umpteen stretching sessions and warm-ups (what a joke – literally walking away from the shade of the tree was enough to make we sweat like a lawn-sprinkler) our first match got underway. As it turned out, it was a good match-up too.

What follows is mainly the views of the author and little to do with anything else. To be honest, these notes do not do justice to many members of the team but that’s largely because I’ve either forgotten them or the incidents happened far away from me (ie. near where the ball was rather than, as me, lagging 40 yards behind play).

Pool match 1

After umpteen stretching sessions and warm-ups (what a joke – literally walking away from the shade of the tree was enough to make we sweat like a lawn-sprinkler) our first match got underway. As it turned out, it was a good match-up too.

In the first half, the starting seven of Smurf, Sinbad, Spawn, Salmon, Joe, Spillage and Chris made an excellent start. We were both solid in defence and willing to spread the ball wide when on attack (a tactic that the Sarries, with some justification, looked upon as a little unsporting given their heavyweights). It paid dividends. By half time, with a lot of ball passing through the hands of Smurf (who was failing miserably in his attempts to stay out of the way) the Latter Day Saints were ahead by 19 points to nil (with three tries – sorry I forget who scored). At half time we discussed things and decided that we’d forgotten this was contact rugby and that we were still trying to play “touch”. Given the scoreline, one could ask “so what?” but we resolved in the second half to take the ball into the tackle if need be.

Whilst not wishing to denigrate the efforts of my teammates, the most talked about incident of the half was the awarding of a rather dubious penalty. After Saints had kicked ahead, the ref (some bloke called Ashley) whistled and advanced far up the field to award a penalty. I guessed there must have been a late tackle (which I thought was odd as, previous to this, there hadn’t been many tackles at all – late or otherwise). I later was lead to believe that the penalty was awarded against our friend Large. What for? Basically for being … Large.

The second half saw me (Blagger) and Rich come on as reinforcements. We promptly conceded a try. First a big bloke mercifully ran round me (I momentarily had hold of his shirt I think) and practically through Rich for the Sarries first score. This was shortly followed by a second - from a grubber kick which, though Sinbad looked favourite to win the footrace, bounced kindly for the Sarries. A third followed as we suddenly found it hard to get out of our own half. Fortunately Sarries had a kicker much like Kenny Logan so the score stood at 19-15 to us. Would we hold on?

From the deep kick-off, someone (Spillage I think) got the bright idea to kick the ball back into their half. With play in their half, probably what followed was one of my best moments as a Saracen kicked (rather badly) upfield. I ran in and caught the ball (first embarrassment avoided) on about half way. With all sorts of shouts from the ref and players and with me trying to figure out who in front of me was likely to be offside I simply took the ball into contact. I shipped the ball on safely but the chap I had so hopelessly failed to tackle at the other end followed through with his tackle and basically knocked me into the middle of next week (perfectly legitimately I would like to add). Even Ashley commented that he thought that was rather strong. My consolation was that, when I had slowly got back on my feet, it was just about in time to see us go under the posts for what was the winner. 26-15 final score. We also got a bonus point (for what it’s worth). Two honest fat bloke teams that, in all honesty, weren’t very good had played the game in the spirit intended. It could have gone either way – fortunately it went ours.

Pool match 2

If the waiting around for the first game was bad, the second seemed to take an eternity. Firstly it was unclear whether the side that hadn’t showed up meant we would play our game earlier. Even when we took the field, we waited a long time for a ref to turn up. We waited so long that we firstly chatted to and subsequently had a group photo (see the picture at top of the message board) with our young opponents (Canterbury Wasps I think?). As has been described elsewhere, not only were they young, but they were fit (certainly not fat) and hard.

From the kick-off I surged up the field. But only because I had made the mistake of grabbing hold of the ball carrier who (together with supporting players) drove me backwards at a rate of knots that I didn’t repeat for the rest of the day. As I was eventually cleared out, I suffered the indignity of watching them trot in a try as well as finding that both my boots had fallen apart – and the game was less than a minute old. I had no choice but to go off to change into my trainers (Mark H replacing me). As I tied the laces, Hippo (who was watching the bags) informed me they’d scored again. Worse was to come. By the time I was trotting onto the field, Salmon was stood close to where Sinbad lay and was shouting for someone to get an ambulance.

I don’t wish to recall what followed as it was quite distressing and not part of the rugby day. Suffice to say, Sinbad had a ride in a helicopter and a night in Reading General before it was confirmed that he was going to be OK. Take it steady Sinbad and well played.

Once the helicopter had left it didn’t seem right to continue and, even though it meant sacrificing the near certain win that would have accrued had we been allowed to continue (remember we were two tries to nil down after two minutes), we shook hands with the youngsters and bade them good luck for later.

Pool match 3

The Villagers, sporting smart blue, white, red and white (again) quartered shirts were (if we’re being honest) beatable. They went ahead by 2 tries to nil but both were from turnovers when we were attacking. However, we fought back and with some of the best forward play of the afternoon I thought, we carved out two tries (either side of half-time) to level things. The second was a high point for Rich. Firstly, I was pleased with my exertions, managing not only to support Badger (sorry – I forgot to mention he’d showed up at some point much earlier than now) but to be on hand for a second and third phase possession. This play, deep inside our own half, was all too much for me both psychologically and (mainly) physically as I practically ordered Smurf (our skipper) to take my place. Now, it was round about this time that Rich scored his try. I confess I saw nothing of it but - let’s put it this way - Gareth Edwards has heard someone was videoing the match and has now started a campaign to prevent release of said tape as it would undoubtedly end - once and for all - the question of “What is the best try you have ever seen?”. Blimey, that was a long sentence. Try reading it again four times without breathing. The state you’ll be at the end isn’t even close to how I was feeling at this time. Hottest day ever – madness.

Back to the game. The Villagers got another try and, with us pressing hard, another turnover and they scored from deep to seal their deserved win. Something like 24–10 but I wasn’t really counting. Deserved because they took their chances.

What game 3 did more than anything though was make us feel a little more comfortable after Sinbad’s knock. Knowing that it was “something that could’ve happened anywhere” doesn’t make any difference. But playing a game helped.

Anyway, played 3 (well 2 and a bit), won 1. That put us in the spoon or what could have been called, “The proper Fat Blokes Sevens Tournament”.

Spoon Quarter-final

Something close to controversy surrounded our quarter-final as the wasps team we thought we were going to play seemed to have bu****ed off and had drafted in some replacements. Whilst Eek had said it was OK to do this, some of our ranks thought it a little unfair that a) the whole team was going to be replaced, and b) they were to be replaced by Cantab Wasps (ie. those that had started to thrash us in game 2 – the Sinbad match).

It wasn’t clear whether we were going to lodge an official complaint or simply moan about it but, at length, it turned out that we were never supposed to be playing this team anyway and that we’d been given a bye to the semis (due to one team not turning up or something). Good result that. A win and no injuries.

Spoon Semi-final

Memories of the Kassam on March 2 returned as … well frankly we stuffed the Irish! Forget the score and the scorers. The truth was, these guys were the biggest heroes of the lot. The London Irish lads had entered two teams into the tournament which meant that some of their players had played twice as many games as us. Nor did they have the fitness or skills to compensate. They were lead by Eek the Weeble who had, in addition to the games, refereed several games. OK so we won. But the point was it was a good run-out played in the best spirit of the game.

At this point I should say thanks again to Martin (aka Eek) and the others that made all this possible. A storming inaugural event. Keep up the excellent work my friends.

Spoon Final

A game too far I’m afraid. Things have been said about some of our players getting carried away in the exhibition game on the main pitch immediately beforehand but, to be fair, the same was true of the Leeds Lardies (one of whom collected a rather unusual soveigneer to prove it – eh Spillage).

We had plenty of possession and some of it in the right part of the pitch but Leeds scored easy tries in the first half from turnover ball. Towards the end of the first half we threw away several positions from near their line only to see them win another footrace from a grubber kick.

I did fear, during that first half, I was going to be binned. Wrapping up a Leeds player and turning him in the tackle I was upset when several hands came over the top to steal the ball. From the bottom of the ruck I yelled something about rucks, hands-in and a penalty. A shrill blast of the whistle immediately followed. I rose from the melee slowly, contemplating the shame of being dismissed in the final, imagining the ref saying something like “we don’t need any more refs thank you – off you go”. Instead he cleared his throat and said, “Hands in the ruck there lads – penalty to the greens”. (I’m still not proud of what I did.)

My last participation encapsulated the whole team performance in the match. Playing as individuals and, even then, not always very well. From inside our own half, for reasons that I cannot explain I decided to kick the ball away. I actually connected with the ball better than I can ever remember. Two Saints (Rich and Spillage I think) manfully chased the kick. A tyke (who I now believe to be Leedsexile) got there first but he was on his own. However, he evaded both chasers and then proceeded to run up the touchline. At times like this, everything works in slow-motion (well I was tired and it was very warm). Perhaps because I didn’t move until it was too late I realised I couldn’t stop him travel the full length of the pitch. With 5 yards to go and as I turned over on my ankle (the race was already lost), I’m sure I said something like “Oh very well played” (words to that effect anyway). The final score was 19-0. My consolation (such as it was) came from Spawn. I went to him on the final whistle apologetically saying that I’d played a shocker – to which he replied “we all did”. And he was right of course.

But what the heck. Well done Leeds. Well done everyone. Especially well done Eek who spoke kindly of us, the vanquished finalists, in the post-match presentation.

Next year? Well part of me would like to think that I will continue to try to get fitter and lose some weight, such that I’m not going to be eligible. But I would love to do it all again (and probably shall).