When you have a pencil tucked behind your ear and you’re carrying a note pad, you become a magnet for all sorts of questions. People will often confuse you with someone who actually matters. I’m just there to keep count and spell at least one player’s name wrong each week. There is always that awkward dance with the regulars. They hover over for a chat and soon launch into a lecture about how every other club is paying its players thousands and that they cheat at the breakdown. I listen, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, all the time desperately trying to remember their name. As bewildering as some of those exchanges can be, I look forward to them every winter. Rugby is lucky to have so many fans at the grassroots who still care so deeply about the game. And anyone with an umbrella is always welcome to sidle up next to me.
Speaking of the weather
Whenever it is chucking it down, and mobility has been reduced to almost zero on the account of how many layers you are wearing, I always think of my dear late colleague Alistair McMurran. He stood on the sidelines every winter for more than 40 years. He was a real gentleman and a wonderful servant of the game. Ali spent countless hours compiling and maintaining the club statistics he started up in 1976. We still lean on that database and Wayne Parsons has diligently kept it going.
Real rugby
Elite rugby can leave you cold. Not many answer their phone at that level. Some of the players prance about like prima donnas only to flame out each weekend. And quite frankly, it has become boring to watch. A lot of the attacking flare and instinct has been ground out of the game in favour of patterned footy which usually involves behemoth-sized loose forwards crashing into each other phase after phase. Club rugby is a different beast. They still throw wild passes, run it when they should kick it, kick it when they should run it and quite often fumble around and muck it up. It is all so gloriously unpredictable and a lot of fun.
New faces
Every season there is an astonishing amount of new names on the team lists. Dunedin is a university city, and teams rise and fall in cycles as players leave the area and new ones filter in. Some of them even live up to the hype. Watching the younger players develop and perhaps go on to play representative rugby is a fun journey. That journey does not take as long any more. School leavers used to spend a few years in the colts before getting an opportunity at premier grade level. But these days the best of them are rushed into fill out those very large premier squads.
Getting real close
That rope, which separates you from the field of play, folds in gradually until you’re basically on the paddock hoping you don’t find yourself under a bomb. There is no better view in all of sport.
