Post by Jim Possible on Aug 2, 2008 22:36:31 GMT
Hartlepool Rovers are not the best team in the world, currently they are not even the best team in Hartlepool, but once they were one of the most famous teams in England and one of the most feared. For a long time they held the World Record for the amount of points scored in a season and were the very first opponents of the Barbarians. Alas such heady days have passed and they now dwell in the mediocrity of Durham Northumberland Division 1, some 7 leagues below the Premiership having been relegated from North 2 East at the end of last season.
Despite all this I am still proud to call Rovers my club and am very pleased to say that no matter where in the world I have travelled I always have managed to bump into someone who knows the club.
Each time I meet someone I always seem to recount some tale or other about the goings on at the club and many of them can be quite amusing. So although I've never been a fantastic exponent of the game of rugby union I've decided to put down in writing my memoirs of how at 29 years and 350 days old I ended up as a veteran of the Rovers front row.
Veteran is a term that takes some getting used to when your still clinging to the wreckage of being the right side of 30 but it's one the Hartlepool Mail and Roy "Scoop" Kelly seemed to have used to describe me for a number of years now, in fact the cheeky beggar only remarked the other week that he'd thought I'd surpassed my 30th birthday several years ago when I declared to him that I would be passing this milestone before the season started.
Anyway, my rugby career really started in my first week of secondary school.
At 11 I'd often watched rugby on the telly and enjoyed it immensly but had never been given the opportunity to play, I suppose that if I'd asked my mam she might have looked at local clubs and got me into the game young but I was never the most confident child so never asked her.
In my first lesson of PE in secondary school however I met my rugby mad teacher Mr Senior. The man who gave me my first opportunity to play the game.
As with most secondary schools my first PE lesson at Brierton Comp. was taken up with a kit inspection so that the teachers could check that the list of kid handed to parents before their kids joined had been duly bought and was in good order with name tags etc attached.
Being the school rugby coach Mr Senior was keen to identify potential players as soon as he could and wasted no time in telling us that the team trials would be starting that week. Wanting to carve a bit of a reputation for myself in my new school (having been a bit of a geek and not great at footy in my old school) I told a few of my new friends I'd played before and would be giving it a go at the trials.
In the days before the trials I infiltrated myself into the company of a lad called Kevin Anderson, who is still a mate of mine today and I knew had been playing rugby since he was 8.
I tapped him for his opinions on the players he knew and his opinion of what position somebody of my slightly chubby stature should have a crack at. His immediate answer was that I should play hooker.
So that night I went into the trial announcing that I was a hooker not even knowing where the hooker played or what he did. What I did know was that they were often considered the hard men of a team, something which suited me fine, despite me being as soft as a wet blanket in terms of fighting skills.
My lack of fighting skills had been well exposed at primary school on a number of occasions due to my inability to stop and think before I opened my mouth and offended somebody.
However one quality I knew I had from this experience was that of being able to take a beating and get up and smile at my opponent as if they had been unable o hurt me. This was what I was hoping would get me by as a hooker. Quite amusing when I look back at it.
The trial itself seemed to go well, I can't remember many of the details other than the fact that I was the only person to put myself forward as a hooker and that I had a slightly better idea than a few of the others who had turned up abou the rules of the game because I had watched it before on telly.
The others at the trial seemed to be comprised of some of the emerging hardcases of the school who thought rugby was their chance to participate in authorised violence, footballing rejects, posh kids whose parents encouraged them into rugby and some actual rugby players like Kev.
Thankfully within that crowd I manage to pass muster and was selected for the teams first game against Ian Ramsey School of Stockton a few weeks later.
The experience of that game was brilliant, being part of a team travelling on a school mini bus - then still the preserve of the school superstars to another school with a load of lads who were just getting to know each other. I thrived on listening to the other lads stories and lies about how good they were and previous rugby exploits.
The game itself was probably not pretty to watch as it ended in a 4 - 0 win to Ian Ramseys who were equally clueless as we were. I have a distinct memory of it taking me at least 5 scrums before I cottoned on that I was supposed to hook the ball back to my side rather han push my opponent off the ball and that nearly every maul had about 12 participants on either side.
Coming home on the bus was great with the lads sharing their war wounds on the bus and one of the emerging psychos having landed a supberb punch on one of the oppositions toffy nosed centres without the ref or any of the teachers spotting it.
So my first experience of a rugby match, I suppose got me hooked and I wanted more.
Despite all this I am still proud to call Rovers my club and am very pleased to say that no matter where in the world I have travelled I always have managed to bump into someone who knows the club.
Each time I meet someone I always seem to recount some tale or other about the goings on at the club and many of them can be quite amusing. So although I've never been a fantastic exponent of the game of rugby union I've decided to put down in writing my memoirs of how at 29 years and 350 days old I ended up as a veteran of the Rovers front row.
Veteran is a term that takes some getting used to when your still clinging to the wreckage of being the right side of 30 but it's one the Hartlepool Mail and Roy "Scoop" Kelly seemed to have used to describe me for a number of years now, in fact the cheeky beggar only remarked the other week that he'd thought I'd surpassed my 30th birthday several years ago when I declared to him that I would be passing this milestone before the season started.
Anyway, my rugby career really started in my first week of secondary school.
At 11 I'd often watched rugby on the telly and enjoyed it immensly but had never been given the opportunity to play, I suppose that if I'd asked my mam she might have looked at local clubs and got me into the game young but I was never the most confident child so never asked her.
In my first lesson of PE in secondary school however I met my rugby mad teacher Mr Senior. The man who gave me my first opportunity to play the game.
As with most secondary schools my first PE lesson at Brierton Comp. was taken up with a kit inspection so that the teachers could check that the list of kid handed to parents before their kids joined had been duly bought and was in good order with name tags etc attached.
Being the school rugby coach Mr Senior was keen to identify potential players as soon as he could and wasted no time in telling us that the team trials would be starting that week. Wanting to carve a bit of a reputation for myself in my new school (having been a bit of a geek and not great at footy in my old school) I told a few of my new friends I'd played before and would be giving it a go at the trials.
In the days before the trials I infiltrated myself into the company of a lad called Kevin Anderson, who is still a mate of mine today and I knew had been playing rugby since he was 8.
I tapped him for his opinions on the players he knew and his opinion of what position somebody of my slightly chubby stature should have a crack at. His immediate answer was that I should play hooker.
So that night I went into the trial announcing that I was a hooker not even knowing where the hooker played or what he did. What I did know was that they were often considered the hard men of a team, something which suited me fine, despite me being as soft as a wet blanket in terms of fighting skills.
My lack of fighting skills had been well exposed at primary school on a number of occasions due to my inability to stop and think before I opened my mouth and offended somebody.
However one quality I knew I had from this experience was that of being able to take a beating and get up and smile at my opponent as if they had been unable o hurt me. This was what I was hoping would get me by as a hooker. Quite amusing when I look back at it.
The trial itself seemed to go well, I can't remember many of the details other than the fact that I was the only person to put myself forward as a hooker and that I had a slightly better idea than a few of the others who had turned up abou the rules of the game because I had watched it before on telly.
The others at the trial seemed to be comprised of some of the emerging hardcases of the school who thought rugby was their chance to participate in authorised violence, footballing rejects, posh kids whose parents encouraged them into rugby and some actual rugby players like Kev.
Thankfully within that crowd I manage to pass muster and was selected for the teams first game against Ian Ramsey School of Stockton a few weeks later.
The experience of that game was brilliant, being part of a team travelling on a school mini bus - then still the preserve of the school superstars to another school with a load of lads who were just getting to know each other. I thrived on listening to the other lads stories and lies about how good they were and previous rugby exploits.
The game itself was probably not pretty to watch as it ended in a 4 - 0 win to Ian Ramseys who were equally clueless as we were. I have a distinct memory of it taking me at least 5 scrums before I cottoned on that I was supposed to hook the ball back to my side rather han push my opponent off the ball and that nearly every maul had about 12 participants on either side.
Coming home on the bus was great with the lads sharing their war wounds on the bus and one of the emerging psychos having landed a supberb punch on one of the oppositions toffy nosed centres without the ref or any of the teachers spotting it.
So my first experience of a rugby match, I suppose got me hooked and I wanted more.