Has Beens and Never Beens

Waking up at 10 am last Saturday after a night on the lash, I knew already that playing rugby was the last thing I should've been thinking about. I had a few concerns, firstly the meet time was a full four hours before kick off, slightly unnecessary for a Merit League game against a local third team one might think. Secondly, with only 5 hours sleep in the bank I wasn't, shall we say, on top of my game in the broadest possible terms and thirdly I seemed unable to escape the invisible shackle of pungent, stale snakebite, my exotic tipple of choice from the night before.

We arrived at the venue for the game a good 3 hours before kick off and even though the banter was flying around the majority of us were certainly not in the frame of mind to get involved. Finally 3pm came around and we were greeted on the pitch by one of the strangest, most eclectic mixes of men I have ever seen in my short life to date. Ranging from 18 to 45 and carrying off some intriguing body types it was at that moment the phrase "has beens or never beens" was coined...

Our line up boasted some positional changes, a number 8 playing Fly half, he became the star of the show, scoring 25 of our 52 points...including a hat-trick! Our opponents new every dirty trick in the book and our cause wasn't helped by the hopelessness of the referee who appeared to have never watched rugby before let alone played it or refereed it. We ended up cruising to a 52-5 victory and I must admit I did have slightly more fun than I had expected to seven hours earlier but I still couldn't help feeling my time had been wasted somehow.