Even My Best ‘Friends’ Now Refer To me As A Mongrel
To those of you who occasionally read my pieces might not know that I am a hopeless tragic when it comes to rugby. I simply adore the game for, as a fan, it provides all the agony and ecstasy one can want, neatly packaged up into eighty minutes on a Saturday afternoon.
However, I have to admit that the last few years the scales have tipped steadily onto the agony side of the ledger as my particular team has performed rather poorly.
Well let’s be honest here, they have been shit!
To add insult to injury, many of my ‘closest ‘friends are die-hard New Zealand supporters who like nothing better than to grind the Australian national team into the ground which they do with monotonous regularity. Not satisfied with their win they take great pleasure in putting the boot in while I lie sobbing on the ground.
However, to offset my pain, I perhaps have been blessed with ability to switch sides at the drop of a hat which, given we are in the midst of the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals can be rather handy!
This anomaly is due to the fact that all my life I have been rather a wanderer by trade, taking up residence in various countries for a few years at a time. The irony is that each of those countries I settled in, albeit temporarily went out of their way to offer me citizenship which I gladly accepted. To make matters even better was that each and every country in which I settled had rugby as their national sport.
Bliss!
Now, while in resident in those particular counties I religiously followed their national teams with the same enthusiasm and gusto as those born and bred there.
That is except one!
One of the first counties I ‘settled’ in was South Africa after my parents emigrated from the U.K.where I spent twelve years as a teenager and a young adult and, while there became a fervent follower of the Springboks.
Each year that team would either travel to or host New Zealand’s national team, the formidable All Blacks. Beating them was was the highlight of every season and each encounter was a battle of biblical proportions.
Basically it was the team one loved to hate and losing to them was painful to put it mildly, leaving the country with a bad taste in their collective mouths.
‘Patriotically’ I guess I should have at least been a die-hard supporter of the country of my birth but patriotism for me over the years has been rather a foreign concept.
A few years spent in France gave me a taste of the Le Bleu’s flair for the game with their unpredictably and Gallic flair which has broken many a team’s hearts, especially those dastardly All Blacks. I followed them with an unbridled zeal that even my French friends thought rather odd!
Ironically, on leaving France I ended up working in the far-flung country of New Zealand where rugby is not so much a game as it is a religion. Each and every Kiwi seems have that wild-eyed fanaticism when it comes to their national game which oozes from every pore! They’re a wonderful lot the Kiwis and they welcomed me with their warmth and generosity like nowhere I have ever been before.
They even gave me a passport!!
Unfortunately, try as much as I could, I was simply unable to get behind the All Blacks and when attending games, I would stand out amongst fans dressed in their traditional black shirts with me wearing the opposite team's colours willing them to put the Kiwi’s beloved team to the sword.
It seldom happened!
I felt adrift without a team to follow and embrace, a rugby orphan if you wish, lonely and bereft and reviled by those around me for not adopting the national team of my new found country.
I was a pariah, an outcast, berated by strangers and even my closest friends as a rugby mongrel scavenging for scraps at the patriot's table. I knew I had to leave and to find a new land where I could cheer lustily alongside passionate fans proudly wearing their team’s colours.
Then, I found Australia, that great southern land over the Tasman Sea which was undergoing a renaissance when it came to rugby. I thought I had died and gone to rugby heaven.
Oh the ecstasy as those mighty Wallaby warriors demolished all before them including (regularly) exacting revenge and grinding those All Blacks into the soil, even on their own turf. Sadly, those glory days are long gone and those dastardly chaps from NZ have risen and risen until most teams now fear them.
So, now, here we are on an auspicious day as we have reached the quarter-finals of the World Cup and today the Australians are up against England and New Zealand vs Ireland. Either way, win or lose I will, as is my wont, jump horses and support one of my ‘other’ teams.
If all comes to nought and my lot are bundled out before the finals I will have to follow the team in my ‘new’ country, Indonesia except unfortunately they prefer badminton to the rough and tumble of rugby.
So, wish me luck otherwise, I will be forced to hunt through the sports cupboard and find the shuttlecocks and take up a new sport altogether.
Paul v Walters is the best selling author of several best selling novels. When he is not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali he occasionally rises to scribble for several international travel and vox pop journals.
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Komentar
Ian Weinberg
4 tahun yang lalu #37
Victory is sweet. Relieved, exhausted but feeling warm all over!🏆
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #36
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #35
I sympathise with your scrum aversion, Manjit. Surely the worst position, after tight head prop, is second row, particularly if the front row have been on the baked beans. 🤣😂🤣
CityVP Manjit
4 tahun yang lalu #34
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #33
Well Paul Walters, much though it grieves me to say it, based on performance to date, my head says the Pomms. My heart, however, is in the southern hemisphere with the Boks.
Ian Weinberg
4 tahun yang lalu #32
well, well here we go. Overwhelmed and warmly ensconced by newly converted Aussie-Bok fans!
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #31
Ian Weinberg Well they made it to the final !!! Good Luck !!
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #30
Ken Boddie So the Welsh almost squeaked through, The All Blacks tumbled so a SA vs England final. Predictions?
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #29
Jerry Fletcher Ah yes and so it goes, The reach of the game is indeed spreading added to by Japan's wonderful performance in this year's World Cup
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #28
@Franci Eugenia Hoffman Well said, Thank you
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #27
Pascal Derrien I think these days gentlemen is too loose a term to be applied to the sport. Thanks for stopping by
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #26
John Rylance I think you just hit the nail on the head there John, thanks for stopping by
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #25
Tausif Mundrawala Thanks as always for dropping by, much appreciated. Privileged indeed or blessed even. Times were a little different in the '80s and 90's when new arrivals ina country weren't treated as suspicious characters and were expected to 'do the right thing ' while there.
John Rylance
4 tahun yang lalu #24
Some would argue Football and Rugby Union have become namby pamby. Saying that the physicality of bygone days would not be tolerated today. Gone are the days of such Footballers as Norman bites yer legs Hunter and Clogger Harris. As well as Former Rugby players who would term what goes on in the game today as "handbags"
Pascal Derrien
4 tahun yang lalu #23
Jerry Fletcher
4 tahun yang lalu #22
Ian Weinberg
4 tahun yang lalu #21
In other words Ken Boddie I'll probably be soiling myself in Aus!
Ian Weinberg
4 tahun yang lalu #20
Agreed. Hope to be watching us in the final from Aussie soil Ken Boddie
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #19
Yep. There were a lot of handling errors but great games by de Klert and Mapimpi, Ian Weinberg. 👍
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #18
Ian Weinberg
4 tahun yang lalu #17
Relieved. Even though there was dominance Ken Boddie we're going to really need to up the game against the Welshies. Serious rugger ahead of us.
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #16
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #15
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #14
Jim Murray Sound advice
Jim Murray
4 tahun yang lalu #13
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #12
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #11
😩
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #10
Ken Boddie Yup Ken it was pretty sad. But we made too many mistakes and gotta say the Poms were better prepared.
Debasish Majumder
4 tahun yang lalu #9
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #8
Robert Cormack
4 tahun yang lalu #7
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #6
Ali Anani
4 tahun yang lalu #5
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #4
If rugby is the game played in heaven, Ian Weinberg, then there must be a helluva lot of battered and bruised winged souls. So if you're relying on prayers to get the Boks to glory, then I'd say you've got Buckleys, as St Peter's got his hands full with crowd control. Personally, I'll be wishing and hoping that ‘Old Nick’ keeps his influence away from the refs and the touch judges.
Ian Weinberg
4 tahun yang lalu #3
Ken Boddie
4 tahun yang lalu #2
Paul Walters
4 tahun yang lalu #1