By now we'd settled
into university life and friendships had been firmly forged. All the
pre-September nerves were washed away and wondrous senior characters had
started to ease the younger members of the gang out of their shells. Worcester
Students Rugby Football Club had begun to tattoo itself on our very being - and
it was great.
The Oxford English
Dictionary reads:
Horrible
1. Causing or likely to cause horror, shocking.
2.
Very unpleasant.
But, if you stretch
the word to its limit, just before it snaps and explodes into a thousand horrible
pieces, it becomes the word beautiful. WSRFC
mastered the art of taking the horrible so far that it transforms into a thing
of rugged and resilient beauty. It could be seen in every member and in every
social situation. Interaction with each other had become vulgar, alcohol abuse
was by now horrific and the style of rugby we played mirrored our nature.
Enforcers such as Ed Cook, Jon Drever, Andrew Murphy, Thomas Leigh, John Clark
and Sam Watson et al meant that every team we came up against feared us. We
were branded a horrible team by our opponents, which to us was beautiful.
Here's how the most
feared enforcer of them all saw things, Mr Ed Cook said:
"The brand of
rugby we played was horrible as you said, mainly because we weren't afraid to
get stuck in and all the lads were playing for their mates. No one was afraid
to have a scrap and everyone wanted to smash their opposite number - or anyone
that came near them - off the park and into an ambulance."
Rugby had become the
focal point of our university lives and we'd been told by several senior
members: "You can either play rugby or you can finish your course in three
years with a 2:1 - your choice." In the annual team photo of the squad the
year before we arrived it was calculated that of the 52 men in the photograph -
four of them graduated that year.
We'd committed fully
to discarding our academic quests and concentrating on the rugby way of life.
We took to the gym every day trying in vein to tip the scales past the 12 stone
mark, we practiced our drinking whenever possible and trained tirelessly to try
to impress Andrew Cushing.
Strangely, amid the
furore of our new lives, a regular routine was beginning to appear. Every week
started the same way. We would roll out of bed after a sleepless night, throw on
some kit and waddle down to The Bottom Field. Every step of the way your brain
would tell you "You realise you don't have to do this, you can go back to
bed if you want." but somewhere lodged deep inside us all were Andrew
Cushing's eyes dragging you towards the pain-forsaken hour that was about to
ensue.
Cush had many tricks
up his sleeve, but a personal favourite of mine was the '233s'. We knew that if
he was pacing out in a curve we were in for an easy ride, and I got to enjoy
the satisfaction of proving how much faster I was than Gary Dipple. Not only
that, but we could expect to be a part of history. One cold winter morning Adam
West ran 233m in 19 seconds flat. Usain Bolt's 200m world record of 19:19 bares
insignificance really, doesn't it?
There was one session that
everybody dreaded - the 40-minute run. Essentially, it meant running around the
circumference of The Bottom Field for 40 minutes with your positional
compatriots and the pace would vary as and when the patrolling, sadistic
gargoyle decided to inflict more pain on us. I never really minded the
challenge, mainly because it gave me the chance to show to everyone how much
more of an engine I had than Gary Dipple.
I did ask Gary for his
thoughts on being shown up morning after morning, but he refused to comment.
It's not really surprising, it must've been very embarrassing for him - it's
probably why he spent so much time on the bank passing the ball to himself.
However, others didn't
share my tolerance of the infamous fitness test.
One man has never
completed a 40-minute run, and that man is Jamie Tsang. The gruelling demands
of the challenge were always too much for the front-row fresher and he started
four runs - dropping out of them all with a curiously tight hamstring.
His take on it was:
"It was probably that I couldn't be arsed. I'm not saying I could have
finished one, but after 25 minutes I just wasn't too bothered about completing
it."
A vintage Jamie Tsang response.
In some ways, he was
wise - another member of the front-row union very nearly died on a 40-minute
run. Tom Lovegrove was a regular Waratah in his first year but on one fateful 40-minute
run his playing days were almost abruptly ended, and his life. Twenty minutes
into the run he pulled up, clasping his chest and gasping for air - he was
having a heart attack (apparently). Thankfully, it was only a minor heart
attack and when asked how long he'd be out for, he answered valiantly:
"Two weeks
min."
What a warhorse.
The trials and
tribulations of a Monday morning weren't confined to the front-row forwards.
One of the football boys had started drinking with us and was convinced that
footballers were fitter than rugby players. After a Facebook pressure-group was
launched - something that would play a big part in our first year - he joined
us for a Monday morning session. It was a 233 session and Jordan Nwachukwu was
setting himself to show how much fitter he was than all of us.
He recalled:
"I remember
stumbling out of bed at 06:50. My kit was all ready as the lads warned my if I
was late, I'd be sent away. I didn't really know what to expect - the arrogant
footballer in me thought "I'm fit, how hard can this really be?" Oh,
how I was wrong. I met the lads outside halls, who had faces even more
miserable than my own and jogged to the bottom field to make sure we were on
time, no one spoke. It was there I met Cush for the first time when he asked
one of the boys who I was. Next came a barrage of abuse about being a gayballer
and a few jokes starting to fly around about Megatron [Martin Misiko] not being
the only black guy anymore - jokes that became all too familiar throughout my
years with WSRFC. Whilst being introduced to the 'onside, onside up' warm-up, I
kept hearing a lot of the senior boys mumbling:
"It's 233s."
"Look at the way
he is striding out, placing the cones."
"I fucking hate
233s."
"The bald man was
striding out a big arc across the bottom field. Someone explained to me what
233s were, to which I didn't think much of - an overconfidence that was soon to
be extinguished. We were split into positional groups and, of course, I was
placed with the wingers - cue more stereotypical jokes. We were the last group
to go, Spud was whispering to everyone not to go too fast. I stayed with the
front-runner all the way round and felt ok. The keen fresher in me wanted to
show everyone how fast I was , so the next time round I decided to really go
for it. Huge mistake. I finished and my chest felt like it was going to
explode, coughing and spluttering and I felt like I couldn't breath. Before I
knew it, we were off again. I was instantly behind my group and the fastest my
body could carry me was a slow jog. After crossing the finish line, I carried
on going straight under the 'piss tree'. It was here that I vomited everywhere
and collapsed on the floor. I'd never experienced anything like it. I had
unintentionally adopted the position the boys called the foetal position. It
was in this position that I spent the rest of the session. I could hear the
boys laughing:
"Come on, Prince,
you've still got one more to do."
and "I think he
might be dead."
I came out from under
the tree once everyone had finished their last sprints. I experienced laughter
from a lot of people, although some were clearly struggling themselves. My 9am
lecture never saw my face that day. That session will forever live in my memory
as the day I died during 233s."
I asked Prince for 100
words, he sent me 474 - stupid footballer.
When Cush decided the
weather was too miserable, which for him would be -24oc, driving ice-rain,
gale-force winds and a frozen field, he'd annoy the basketballers by taking us
indoors. He'd decided that in our circuits, each player should be able to
complete 100 press-ups, sit ups, burpees, ski-jumps or whatever exercise he
decided to throw at us in the allocated minute. One week, the underarmour model
that is Martin Misiko achieved this extraordinary feat - to which Cush said in
amongst a racist slur:
"Well, you should
be doing fucking 200."
After the session,
half of the boys had the pleasure of going back to bed - but the rest of us
were subjected to a whole day of lectures. In fact, the lectures were often
more demanding than Monday morning fitness. I had the task of taking on Oli
Grant in left-handed tennis under the crooked eyes of Malcolm Armstrong. Oli
Grant had been given the nickname 'Giant', while his head coach thought his
name was Pete Kemp. The lectures were held in the sports hall and I'd never
seen a man sweat so much in all my life. Playing against Giant was a genuine
health hazard as the court became a deluge.
Lunchtime, we'd
congregate at Berry's and throw a chicken coronation sandwich down our necks
before returning to our inconvenient academia. The afternoons were long and
arduous as we fought our heavy eyelids to stay awake as some useless lecturer
talked at us. By five o'clock we were free. Free to get some food on board
before meeting for training again.
Monday evening
training was a mixed bag. They were the most important sessions of the week
where we did the bulk of our technical rugby work. Where were these sessions
held - either Droitwich RFC, Malvern RFC or the old favourite in the dark on
The Bottom Field. Cush was joined by his sidekicks Andy Reynolds and the
one-and-only Tony Bevan as they put us through our paces in the dark. Looking
back, it's astonishing to think that we ever won a game. Essentially, we
trained on a gravelly 40m x 10m area of land, barely lit by poor street
lighting. A particular favourite of Cush's was the tackling diamond, where
players in similar positions would group up to work on our tackling techniques.
Thankfully, my quartet of Guy Griffiths, Luke Milton and Lewis Joiner would
give each other the eye and we'd run through things at 60% - it's the sensible
thing to do. Meanwhile, those on the lower end of the brain cell spectrum were
hammering seven bells of shit out of each other, namely Jonpaul McGrane and Tom
Shepard. Each week it'd be a ruthless show of one-upmanship where the only
winner would be the spectators as they held back their laughter watching the
pair try to hospitalize their partner. This would lay the foundation of a
relationship we'd come to know as 'The Row Bros' - a turbulent tag-team that shared
highs and lows over the years.
With the long day seen
to, we deservedly slipped on our glad rags and started a ritual that would
become universally known as the pre-lash. The pre-lash comes in many guises and
its purpose was to make sure that we were well oiled before heading into town, to
make sure we didn't spend hundreds of pounds on a night out and more
importantly to provide us with stories that will forever be shared.
By now, we'd started
to be joined by senior members of the club - which served both to petrify us
and keep us entertained. Ed Cook, the most feared of all the senior members,
had become quite the regular on Monday nights along with Andrew Murphy and Sam
Brookes.
Ed Cook said:
"The Monday night
pre-lashes were awesome. Your year brought some top lads to the uni. I think
the other lads and I took it upon ourselves to sack off a year of Tuesday
lectures in order to break you guys down, and then build you back up as a group
of Worcester Rugby Lads. You boys were always up for it and always had a good
turn-out for nights out.
"It was awesome
seeing you boys crying, being sick on each other and smashing your own halls up
- all for the sake of becoming legends of the future.
"I think in some
ways the 'older' and 'more mature' drinkers wanted to carry on living like
freshers and not accepting the reality of growing up and actually having to do
something at uni. I think in some cultures this is known as 'Peter Pan
Syndrome', although I may have just made that up,"
In the early days, the
pre-lash of choice was Ring of Fire and
it produced some golden moments. To list them all would take an infinite amount
of time but the one that stands alone as the best moment of pre-lash history is
Dave's Table. It was no different to
any other Monday night, we'd all gathered at a pre-determined halls and a game
of Ring of Fire was well underway. This
is the night that Tom Shepard became Dave.
He'd been in a foul mood all night because he was getting picked on for his
choice of t-shirt. He changed t-shirts four times after each one he slipped on
was berated by his friends, but he finally settled on one that he liked only
for it to get covered in beer. He was out injured at the time with a shoulder
injury and was the butt of all the jokes all night.
Tom Shepard relives
the evening:
"Well it all began with somebody pulling the "new rule"
card out when playing ring-of-fire in giant's flat. The rule was that you could
not refer to anyone by their own name/nickname but by the name they chose. I
went for 'Dave' as it was easy for both me and the boys to remember. It became Angry Dave during the night for a while
as whenever 'Jackanory' began it was usually about either my mother or gran. The
table incident came around as Macca [Darren Macalleese] and Pubehead [Mark
George] were trying to smash the small coffee table by either punching or
head-butting it. I had grown tired of their failures so stood on a chair and
proceeded to smash the table into about 1000 different parts. However, that
meant there was more furniture to be broken. and so the video came into
existence and the legend of 'Dave' came into being. But I can tell you that it
bloody hurt, no matter how pissed I was and later in the year it was worse when
Brookesy [Sam Brookes] had me diving onto the proper solid picnic tables
outside the dive."
In the haze that
typified a Monday night, how we got to this stage is unknown - but somehow,
this happened.
Tuesday mornings were
rarely witnessed by any of us. If it was, it was to try in vein to rid a
hideous hangover. The choice of fizzy drink was vital, because anything that
resembled anything that was drunk the previous night would lead to projectile
vomiting. Cherry and Apple Tango were an absolute no-no as was Lilt and Orange
Fanta.
Tuesday nights were a
window for us all to impress as we all shared the same rock-solid slab of
unforgiving astroturf in preparation for our Wednesday games. These sessions,
starting at 8:00pm, were usually the first time some of us had seen the great
outdoors after suffering in bed all day with a VK fuelled hangover from Tramps
which didn't allow you to sleep but churned your stomach like a cement mixer.
The teams split, ran
through their moves and set plays before calling it a night. Occasionally, Cush
would bring us together to face each other in a controlled game of touch - a controlled
game of touch which, inevitably, turned into a full-contact game. If you
managed to get through the session without throwing up last night's kebab or
getting tackled onto the sandpaper-like surface, it could be considered a
resounding success.
The problems really
came when our leader, a deaf West-Walian called Ian Rowberry, decided to issue
us with items that needed to be brought to game the following day. The chaotic
rush to piece together a costume or an ambiguous object to bring with us in
order to avoid being fined was legendary - and perhaps not the best mental
preparation for a rugby match. Neither was the traditional microwavable pasta
Luke Milton and I shared on a Tuesday night, which accounted for twice our
recommended daily allowance of saturated fats.
Fortunately for us,
Tesco was open 24 hours on a Tuesday and we developed a civil partnership. We
travelled down in three cars and as well as the six cans, bottle of port and whatever
else the captain had requested, most of the convoy brought a dozen eggs. While
the Loughborough Students RFC players would probably use the egg whites for a
post-training omelette and the yolks for a nightcap, Worcester Students egged
people on the way home.
Luke Milton's egging
was legendary. He regularly hit the target from the passenger seat, be it on
the bare chest of a girl walking with her boyfriend for a night out or the head
of a cyclist - he'd always get his victim. There was one fresher who didn't
attend the traditional Tuesday night Tesco run because he lived off campus, Guy
Griffiths. He would retreat to his small, cave-like room to order his customary
Dominoes pizza and meet us in the morning. On one Tuesday evening, we had an
unusual amount of eggs left. Not wanting them to got to waste, we parked the
three cars at the top of Comer Road and like a scene from Green Street we
walked down the middle of the road tooled up with large free-rangers. As if by
magic, Guy's window was open and 15 of us fired our eggs at and through the
window.
The following day, we were greeted with:
"Twelve fucking
eggs I found in my room this morning. Most of them have cracked and gone down
the back of my radiator. Twats."
Wednesdays were all
about one thing - rugby. Depending on how far we had to travel depended on the
state of us arriving back in Worcester. Before university, if we'd lost or if
I'd had a bad game I tended to sulk, go home and not drink. This was not an
option if you played for Worcester. Fines were dished out, songs were sung,
penises were rated, binbags were vomited in, bottles were urinated in and some
seriously good times were had.
When we made it back
to the motherland, if we could still stand, we would venture into the dive for
a social and then into town.
Wednesdays were heavenly. So many things happened
on these Waratah Days that it'd be impossible to do them justice in one chapter
- so their time will come in later instalments. Cooky's Corner, Snakey-B, Renard's
Magic XIII, Maligins, Initiation - their stories will be told.
Thursdays would be one
long build-up to the RGS 'recovery' session and trying everything get yourself
into decent enough physical and mental state to come face-to-face with Andrew
Cushing again. These sessions were split into forwards and backs and it's safe
to say the forwards had it tougher than we did. Cush's reasoning for this was
that if the forwards were as talented as the backs then they wouldn't have to
work so hard. I'm not going to argue with him. One of the highlights for the
nimble-footed among us was watching the forwards take part in a live scrummaging
session on the indoor sports hall floor. Each scrum that collapsed was followed
by a collective cry of:
"OW! FUCKING
HELL!"
Nobody dared question
the coach's logic, and it's probably for the best because there wasn't any.
Us backs were faced
with much trickier assignments, like playing netball with tennis balls, walking
around gripping the ball with one hand and Cush's favourite - 100 passes.
He would get us
standing in a line and passing the ball like 1960s centres. The only thing that
was missing was the swivel of the hips. Every single time he came to observe me
he'd say: "No, you can't fucking pass. 12 down to 6 and across."
To this day I have no
idea what he was trying to achieve by getting us to pass like sea-lions, but we
all took it on the chin and waited for the hour to be over.
Without doubt, the
hardest thing I ever had to do at one of these sessions is try to stop myself
exploding with laughter when Ian Renard came dressed as an over-grown school-boy
from the 70s. Luke Milton and I were injured and had to watch the session from
the side. It was in the darkest of winter, but Renard decided the look he'd go
for would be the black, loose-fitting vest; size 12-14 boys heavy cotton, brown
rugby shorts; smart brown socks which barely made it over his ankles and
trainers that were not only at least four sizes too big for him but wouldn't
have looked out of place at the bottom of the lost property bin in school.
He looked absolutely
vile and while he ran around the sports hall, angrily stamping his over-sized
shoes on the ground, Milts and me were holding back an eruption of laughter
with tears streaming down our faces.
Here's how Luke Milton
saw it:
"Me and Gareth
Davies were not training, probably due to all the tackling we get through. But,
as keen freshers, we went along to one of Cush's legendary RGS Thursday night
sessions. What we saw was Ian Renard in an ill-fitting vest, short shorts and
hideous black trainers. He proceeded to run around in that stamping-the-ground
manner of his and as Cush insulted and abused the participants, that's all you
could hear were our high-pitched giggles. The more enthusiastic Renard got, the
louder we giggled. It lasted the whole session."
The inevitable
discussion came on the drive home from training which surrounded the question:
"Are you going out tonight?" Having just recovered from a deathly hangover,
it probably wasn't wise to go out drinking again, but when
CALLING
STU VINCENT
came up on my phone, I
knew I wouldn't have a choice. Sin was the venue of choice on a Thursday
because it played 'trendy' music and black double vodka red bulls were £2.50.
One fateful night, Luke Milton and I each spent £40 in an hour at Sin on
nothing other than double vodka red bulls. My drinking partner woke up in the
garage of a family house nearing hyperthermia. Lightweight.
The corner in which we
gathered had unintentionally become the rugby boys' corner and should anyone
venture onto our turf, they were told in no uncertain terms where they could
take their custom. In the back right corner of the nightclub, giant men in
their best clothes gathered to drink girls drinks and when they finished with
their glass, would smash it against the wall. It was horrible behaviour, but it
was beautiful.
For those who made it,
the next stop would be Bushwackers where we'd act sophisticated in the
champagne bar, drinking VK's, and the memories of the evening were slowly
washed away.
In my first year,
Friday was a non-day. A day of watching DVDs, sleeping, eating and waiting for
Saturday to come. It was time that should probably have been spent studying,
but we knew best. Countdown, Rugby-Golf and fajitas were far more important.
Saturday mornings
would come around pretty quickly and before we knew it we were back in the
rugby frame of mind again with a session on the bottom field. It would be a
full-throttle affair with plenty of contact - the stuff a young, 12-stone
outside half dreams of.
The problem was,
freshers had games on Saturdays, yet we were still expected to take full part
in fitness and contact with these enormous human beings a couple of hours
before playing a match.
After attempting to
tackle Jonny Contact for two hours, freshers were given the final ten minutes
of the session off in preparation for our games. Cheers, Cush. Something tells
me that these Saturday fixtures didn't mean a lot to our head coach. One week,
Sam Brookes was playing on a Saturday and realised the squad selected had no
backs on the bench.
Brookesy bravely said: "Cush, we need some backs for
the bench."
Cush promptly replied:
"No you don't. If one of you get injured, you can fucking hop."
Saturday fixtures were
treated the same way Jonpaul McGrane treated his lovers - get in, get the job
done and get out.
We'd return to
Worcester, tired and emotional from a heavy week of rugby and drinking and
collapse into Malvern Halls to watch a film, play Rugby 08 or fall asleep.
However, on the odd occasion, we'd treat ourselves to an impromptu session of
gin-drinking and glass-eating. On one of these sessions, I had invited a couple
of boys from back home up for the weekend. I genuinely cannot remember the
incident, but Thomas Raymond Leigh was working that evening and watched the
events unfold.
He recalls the tale:
"I was working and Gareth Davies and a few lads were having a
casual couple of beers. One of the visiting boys, Rhodri Morgan, was told because
he was a newbie he had to keep up and despite sinking four pints he was still
behind he was ready to blow. I was happy for him to spew but Luke Milton told
him he wasn't allowed to. The newbie held as best he could but was too scared
to move until Gareth Davies stood and opened up his joggers, allowing his guest
to fill his trousers with around six pints of frothy, chunky Snakey-B. Any
normal man would go home at this point, not WSRFC boys, he proceeded to sit in
his spew filled pants for a good 40 minutes before deciding it was time to go
home and pre drink further. 'See you boys, have a good night!' It's one of the
best things I've ever seen."
We had finished our first
term at University. We'd not learnt much about our area of study, but we'd
learnt a lot about life and we'd never be the same again. We returned to our
native corners of the country to celebrate Christmas with our families and
friends, yet we knew there was a new family waiting for us in the heart of the
UK in January.
The epilogue
Sunday comes around one
time more,
After a week mainly spent
on Bushies' dance floor.
It's time to rest up
for Monday morn,
For then we shall rise
for a session of scorn.
Malagins, Rum, VKs and
Snakebite,
Still in our systems
on Sunday night.
It stops us from
sleeping, insomnia's no fun,
It's the Sunday night
countdown to the 40-minute run.
Get through the
session and try not to spew,
Andrew Cushing is
always watching you.
A full day of lectures
is the prize for our sweat,
But we look forward to
tramps and ballbagged we get.
Tuesday is usually a
hangover day,
Trying everything to
make the pain go away.
The only known cure in
times like these,
Is run-through on the
astro into a Northeasterly breeze.
The frantic race to
find six cans and port,
Which will all be
drunk on the way back to our fort.
Washing our kit and
ridding the boots of dirt,
Ready to look don the
Waratah shirt.
Wednesday is all about
rugby and booze,
Beer's good if we win,
goes down the same if we lose.
In The Champagne Bar the
drink hits the lips,
Before heading to Chicks
for salmonella and chips.
The following morning
is all aches and pains,
Hangover, knocks and a
thumping migraine.
No use in complaining,
there's training to fit in,
As well as taking over
our corner in Sin.
The weekends descend
into a smear,
In amongst the TV,
rugby and beer.
The only thing that we
know will come,
Is the Sunday night
countdown to the 40-minute run.