You are on a tour in the Southern Hemisphere representing your country. There is time before the serious stuff starts and so you are in a teammate’s hotel room. Everyone has had a feed of drink and you are drinking beer and talking shite.
ne of the guys in the group just won’t shut up and his presence becomes more grating as the night goes on. The mercury tilt switch flips over and suddenly you are holding him by his ankles out of the window four stories up. If you let go, at best he will die, at worst he will survive in some form of vegetative state. There are people drinking by the swimming pool below but they have no idea that a full-grown man is dangling from the window above them. If he screams, the dangler might just get more annoyed and drop him.
I am not sure how long I could hold on to someone by their ankles but apparently there were three or four minutes of suspension before the danglee was brought back to safety.
The next day the two were buddies again, but the annoyance quotient had lessened considerably. What larks we did have! (That event happened in the 1980s — before my time.)
In the previous decade on an international jolly in a destination venue, about half a dozen rugby internationals were living it up after the match had been played. The crew arrived home at about 6.0 in the morning and prevailed upon their host to rustle up the full Irish. This arrived half and hour later and everyone tucked in.
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One guy finished slightly ahead of the rest and decided to nick a sausage from the plate of another. I have often felt that a shallow grave in the Dublin mountains would be the fate for anyone who stole food from my plate — but I have manfully resisted that temptation.
This time, with his hand over the plate and his fingers on the sausage, the thief was stabbed by a fork. The fork went clean through the hand and broke the plate. The thief screamed in agony as the owner of the sausage retrieved it and gobbled it up with no remorse. The group brought the injured player to hospital and he subsequently joined them at an early house to continue the session once he was stitched and bandaged up.
What mad rugger lads we are . . .
This might, you think, be a random sample of bawdy rugby stories from the 1970s and '80s. Remember that when those matches or tours were over, these people went back to their day jobs. These athletes were Corinthians and were allowed to behave like that. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, etc . . . sure they were only letting off a bit of steam. A little bit of bad behaviour or reckless rough and tumble never did anyone any harm, unless of course you were dropped from the fourth floor or were stabbed clean through the hand.
Random sample? Not quite so random. All the mad behaviour with rugby players seems to happen in June. I don’t think it has anything to do with the frequent blood moons you get at this juncture in the calendar. The season is usually nearly over and events that cannot take place during the playing months usually happen in the little window before, during, or after a tour.
You don’t have to think too hard. Professional rugby players are no different from their amateur predecessors and sometimes feel the need for a little bit of latitude. The regime during the season is draconian and June is normally when the window opens up. Remember, pre-season starts in July. It is like letting kids loose in a sweet shop.
So what are we to make of the great Munster fire pit spectacular? What exactly happened here? There were four players and one of them squirted petrol on the fire and some of the lads got burned, but it’s not that bad. The end.
Hard to know whether telling the full story makes it worse or not. Spin it that the two Springboks might just miss the Lions series and quote Jacques Nienaber and Stephen Larkham and maybe that will be enough to get everyone out of a tricky situation.
There were a number of Munster players gathered together for Jean Kleyn’s stag. This is the only time he could organise such an event. Rugby players are like everyone else and I have never been at a stag when alcohol has not been present. There was likely drink taken and I am sure that what happened will come into the public domain. It is very difficult to keep the name of the player who sprayed the fire pit with petrol a secret, or exactly what happened for all the players to receive serious enough injuries.
Over the June bank holiday weekend, Munster were still in with a strong chance of topping the northern table of the Rainbow Cup before the Covid outbreak at the Ospreys put paid to those chances. I doubt Munster would have messed up away to Zebre, but going over there without three of their best players because of some horseplay smacks of an unprofessional approach. Personally I can’t blame them, but it looks really bad, and trying the nothing to see here approach doesn’t cut it either. There is more to come from this misadventure.
It is one of the perks of the job that when you finish the season on tour, a goodly portion of the squad stay on or go further afield from where they have just toured. It is a relief for the coaches that their players are out of sight and out of mind for a while. But there won’t be too many travelling abroad for some hard-earned R&R this summer, given pre-season will be back before travel has really opened up. So it might be difficult to keep a lid on what they get up to. Unfortunately, mobile phone cameras and high profiles are a bad mix.
From the perspective of Munster’s two Springboks this has been bad news. Damian de Allende has been full value to the club, RG Snyman less so. Seven minutes of action for the entire season, then he will be involved with South Africa through the Lions series and then the Rugby championship starts straight after that. That will mean 12 games by the time that series ends in South Africa against New Zealand on October 2. Munster might get a couple of games out of him before the November series. Sometimes it is hard to stay out of harm’s way. The ACL injury was unfortunate, the burns . . .
It will be interesting to see how Wazza tries to control the Lions in a social distancing environment. The Kiwi knows the restorative value of a good piss up if his side cop a bad result. Everyone has been vaccinated, but the possibility of a breach of curfew or an outbreak is always just around the corner. The Barbarians breach while out for a few pints in London shows how difficult it can be to corral a few wild mustangs.
There is practically zero chance of some of the squad being able to control themselves, even though there are only two venues — Sandton in Johannesburg and Cape Town. There won’t be any cultural or commercial visits outside the bubble and trying to sustain any sense of sobriety and social discipline will be too much for some. Wazza will, I am sure, lay it on the line, but there will be curfew breakers and how they are dealt with may be more entertaining and interesting than the main event.
It is in the DNA — we can’t help ourselves.
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