What's the point of Ruby Football?

The world has changed since I was a youngster some 70 years ago when, holding my dad’s hand, he took me to watch rugby every Saturday afternoon. He had officially retired from playing but was all too easily persuaded to turn out for one of lower sides (‘Combe ran 7 or 8 teams in those happy days) if they were short. I went to a rugby playing grammar school, having passed the 11plus, and started playing when I was eleven. There was no mini-rugby back then. 

 

I went on to play the club game until I was in my mid-thirties and then coached mini-rugby. I played for, Westcombe Park the family started playing for them in the early 1920s, Canterbury where my wife and I lived in the seventies and the odd game for Askeans (my old school). Was I any good, not really although as my contemporaries pass away, I am getting better. Before too many years pass, I would have been on the verge of an England trial if circumstance had been slightly different, at least that is the way I will tell it! 

 

The key question is why did we play, why did I play? I enjoyed all forms of sport although not very competent at any. Firstly, you had to enjoy playing the game, the physical activity, the sheer thrill of it all. There was the camaraderie of being in a team of like-minded individuals, the testing of your, and the team’s abilities against the opposition and last but not least the friendships forged over a pint or three in the bar after the game. It didn’t really matter what team you were in, the 1^st XV or the Extra B, how good or bad you were. The key factor being that you were a rugby man, no ladies playing back then, and you would find a welcome in practically every club in the country. Apart from the playing and helping run the club the high spots were going to Twickenham to see England play or perhaps going to see the All Blacks or other touring team play ‘London Counties’ or the like. The vast majority of spectators at these games were either player/ex-players perhaps with children and/or with an enthusiastic lady in tow. There was no need to make the game more attractive, we all understood the laws even if the referee didn’t!!

 

We cannot go back to these ‘golden days’; the professional genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Back in the day when I started the RFU was proud of the concept that Rugby Union was “one game” from the pinnacle of the international team to the lowest level one set of laws applied and anyone, given the right talent, would be able to make it to the international team. The days when Wade Dooley who made it to the England team whilst playing for a junior club, admittedly a very good junior club, Preston Grasshoppers, are long gone. Incidentally Preston Grasshoppers must be doing something right as they, according to their website, run 5 men’s teams, a full selection of underage and mini teams plus a women’s XV and a Girls U12.

 

For better or worse, society has changed. Saturdays are no longer reserved for sport if you are an adult man. There are myriad competing distractions and commitments. Today’s players are no longer willing to commit nine months of weekends to their local team as their fathers might have been. The benefits of modern communication are counterbalanced by the cons. One coach has described WhatsApp as the “worst thing that could have happened to grass-roots rugby” because now you can cry off with a two-second message rather than a phone call to an angry team secretary or coach. It seems to me ludicrous that you can only play for the club that you are registered to, particularly in the lower teams. All players want to do is play. If the away team has only twelve players, but the home team has eighteen why not play a fifteen aside game. Having substitutes stood on the touchline also reduces the number of teams that a club can run. I for one would have rather played a game than have been a sub for the team above. 

 

I am sure that the top players today enjoy the game and the camaraderie just as much as I and countless others did. They do have to consider their earning potential and due to their sheer size, speed and fitness they face more chance of injury than we did. When you hear the top brass talk about growing the game, they mean increasing the number of spectators and getting more revenue from TV rights, not how many people are physically playing each Saturday.

 

So, what is the point of Rugby? At the top I would suggest that it is in the entertainment business as is all professional sport. Whether there are enough spectators willing to pay to watch the game every week to fund the salary bill of the top players is another question. My personal view is no, at least in the UK. Football is to firmly entrenched as the mass spectator winter sport. Rugby will always be a distant second at best.

 

The laws should be modified to recognise that the professional game is different to that played by the majority of players. They do not want and cannot cope with a fast non-stop game. They need a breather as they slowly walk/jog to the next scrum where the ball is put in straight down the middle and the hookers actually strike! Substitutes and leagues should vanish, the county cup competition should be the highlight in the fixture calendar. As people are unwilling to commit to every weekend there is a game perhaps the season should be split into smaller blocks with a couple of weeks off at the end of each block so that players can do other things with their families. 

 

Perhaps this is all a pipe-dream and I am just Don Quixote tilting at windmills. No matter what happens in the future at the age of 77 I will probably not see the demise of Rugby Football Union, or if I do, I will probably be too far gone to care. But if things don’t change the game will surely fade away. That will be a great pity, not for me, but for my grand-children. I would simply like them to have as much fun from rugby as I have had.

  

Modern Times!!

 I am obviously further out of touch with modern life than I realised. As regular readers of my FaceBook posts will know last Saturday my youngest son took me to Twickenham to see England v South Africa (Rugby Union for the uninitiated).

This week I received a survey from Twickenham asking me what I thought about the ground and match facilities. The focus was on the "experience"; the entertainment, the fanzone (didn't know there was one) etc etc.

All I wanted to do was watch a good game of rugby, share some banter with those around me during the game, have a couple of beers before the game and at half-time (not during the game) and be able to get to the toilets without having to queue for about 15 minutes! Perhaps a beer after the game!!

I have been going to Twickenham on and off for seventy years, my dad used to take me and we stood on the old South Terrace.

Yes the game has changed, the venue has changed and the "experience" has changed. Whether the changes are for the better is open to debate - but then I am just curmudgeonly old man!

Farmers and Inheritance Tax

 I am somewhat confused by the furore over the inheritance tax bill that will fall on farmers. If I understand correctly (and I sometimes don't). The government is saying that it will only affect relatively few farmers. In which case it won't raise much money. So why are the government doing all this when the benefit to the exchequer is so low?

When death does stalk the barren land,

When death does stalk the barren land,

The stench of rotting carcases rises

Through the pale watery light

Of the dying sun

 

All around is the decay of a dying civilisation.

Hypocrisy rules as leaders wallow

In their own self importance

Waffle rules where once reason reigned

 

Oh Locke where have you gone?

Has that beacon of light been snuffed out?

Are we forever destined to learn nothing?

Hobbes is gone, forgotten, his legacy spent

 

We are left in the land of the blind

Where the one eyed man is king

Sadly floundering in the mire of his own making

His lifeblood slowly ebbing away.

Like a stag caught in the cars headlights

He stood bewildered frozen to the spot

While the inevitable came hurtling towards him.

 

He now lies fatally wounded

While the carrion crow circle around

Waiting, wondering when to strike

While the populace wait; watching the ship of state

Drift aimlessly along.

 

 

Barry Mellish

July 2009

 

General Election 2024 - Time to change the voting system?

 Well, the election is done and dusted and with only a handful results to be declared a few things are patently obvious, to me at least:

1.     The Tories were routed with only 24% of the vote. 

2.     Labour have a stonking majority with 411 (so far) seats they have an overall majority of 177, at the time of writing, so much for my prediction of 55-65!

3.     LibDems had a fantastic evening returning at least 71MPs (up from 8.)

4.     4 Green MPs (sadly not Hélèna)

But looking beyond the numbers of seats it is clear that there was not a massive swing of support to Labour, rather it is a massive swing away from the Tories. Labour only polled 35% of the popular vote whilst returning 63% of MPs. Our antiquated electoral system of first past the post means that a swing of a few votes in a number of seats can result in massive swings numbers of MPs returned for each party.

 We desperately need some form of proportional representation – but which? I like the concept of constituency MPs, someone that we can write and ask to help resolve local issues. It also enables people locally to return an MP that they want; be it Jeremy Corbyn, Shockat Adam, Iqbal Hussain Mohamed etc etc. If we had a pure proportional system there would not be room for these “oddball” candidates and politics would be the poorer. I for one am fed up with hegemony of the “big parties”. 

Having been returned with his massive majority and relatively low share of the popular vote compared to previous governments, I cannot see electoral reform being high on Sir Keir’s agenda. One can but hope, but I do not see the pigs on the runway ready for take-off – turkeys do usually vote for Christmas!

Why We play the game

 When the battle scars have faded

And the truth becomes a lie
And the weekend smell of liniment
Could almost make you cry.

When the last rucks well behind you
And the man that ran now walks
It doesn’t matter who you are
The mirror sometimes talks

Have a good hard look old son!
The melons not that great
The snoz that takes a sharp turn sideways
Used to be dead straight

You’re an advert for arthritis
You’re a thoroughbred gone lame
Then you ask yourself the question
Why the hell you played the game?

Was there logic in the head knocks?
In the corks and in the cuts?
Did common sense get pushed aside?
By manliness and guts?

Do you sometimes sit and wonder
Why your time would often pass
In a tangled mess of bodies
With your head up someone’s……?

With a thumb hooked up your nostril
Scratching gently on your brain
And an overgrown Neanderthal
Rejoicing in your pain!

Mate – you must recall the jersey
That was shredded into rags
Then the soothing sting of Dettol
On a back engraved with tags!

It’s almost worth admitting
Though with some degree of shame
That your wife was right in asking
Why the hell you played the game?

Why you’d always rock home legless
Like a cow on roller skates
After drinking at the clubhouse
With your low down drunken mates

Then you’d wake up – check your wallet
Not a solitary coin
Drink Berocca by the bucket
Throw an ice pack on your groin

Copping Sunday morning sermons
About boozers being losers
While you limped like Quasimodo
With a half a thousand bruises!

Yes – an urge to hug the porcelain
And curse Sambuca’s name
Would always pose the question
Why the hell you played the game!

And yet with every wound re-opened
As you grimly reminisce it
Comes the most compelling feeling yet
God, you bloody miss it!

From the first time that you laced a boot
And tightened every stud
That virus known as rugby
Has been living in your blood

When you dreamt it when you played it
All the rest took second fiddle
Now you’re standing on the sideline
But your hearts still in the middle

And no matter where you travel
You can take it as expected
There will always be a breed of people
Hopelessly infected

If there’s a teammate, then you’ll find him
Like a gravitating force
With a common understanding
And a beer or three, of course

And as you stand there telling lies
Like it was yesterday old friend
You’ll know that if you had the chance
You’d do it all again

You see – that’s the thing with rugby
It will always be the same
And that, I guarantee
Is why the hell you played the game!

One Hundred Years of the Mellish Family and Westcombe Park RFC

It is May 2024 and it was about a 100 years ago that the Mellish family first became involved with ‘Combe. Nobody quite knows when three brothers Tom, John and Bill Mellish first joined and started playing for the club. As there is a first team photo 1925-26 with John Mellish in it, the probability is that he must have joined a season or two beforehand to learn the game if nothing else. Rugby would not have been played at any school that the sons of a dockworker would have gone to. In all probability they joined the club in 1924-25 or earlier. Their slightly younger cousin, Richard James Mellish, aka Dick Mellish, my dad (born 1907), joined a couple of years later and I have a photo of dad in the 1930-31 “A” XV photo.

Tom Mellish captained the club in the 1929-30 and I know, that his brother Bill captained the “A” XV for at least one season – date unknown. Tom, John and Bill appear to have left the club in the early thirties. Tom became a referee and stayed involved with the game for a number of years. John Mellish, a policeman, was also a keen boxer and was the European Police Welter Weight Champion for 1931. My dad also boxed and was the Sussex Scout light-weight boxing champion in 1922. Whether dad and John ever used their boxing prowess on the rugger field is unknown!

Dad stayed on playing for ‘Combe and was club captain in 1936 -37 and again in 1946-47. Dad “officially” stopped playing rugby at the end of the ‘46-47 season. I was due in the October and because of my mum’s badly damaged legs (She was caught in an air-raid in 1940) they were expecting problems. I do recall that dad would always take his kit along and if one of the lower teams was short of a player, he would join in for them. He always said “don’t tell your mother”; but she always knew. Apart from the dirty kit dad would be stiff and sore on Sunday morning, a feeling that I got to know well over the years!

Dad became involved with the admin side of the game and was Team Secretary for a number of years. These were the days when you had to post a card to each member of every team telling them which team they were in and where they had to be the following Saturday. Dad was Hon. Treasurer from 1964-68 and President from 1966-68.

His youngest brother John, born 1921, played for ‘Combe after the war. He was a No 8 and played for the 1st XV for a number of seasons. John stopped playing relatively young and became a referee. John then became heavily involved with training and vetting of referees. He carried on with this when he left the UK and took his family and settled in Richmond, Virginia, USA. I recall being at Heathrow in the early nineties waiting to catch a flight to San Francisco. In the crowd milling about the terminal, I spotted a number of people wearing track suits with the words “California Rugby Referees on Tour”. I spoke to one of them and mentioned that my uncle was a referee in the States, but that he lived on the East Coast. He asked me his name and I said John Mellish, he then yelled “Guys we have John Mellish’s nephew on the flight with us”. It appeared John was well known in referring circles in the States and had worked tirelessly in helping set-up the organisational structure – he was rewarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Rugby in America.

Dad was the eldest of five brothers and although only John played, two of his other brothers, George and Gordan were involved backstage as it were helping run the club, serving behind the bar etc. The ladies were also involved; my mum, Grace (Gordon’s wife) and Jean (John’s wife) helping prepare the sandwiches and cups of tea for the players after the game. This was long before the advent of professional staff and hot meals after the game.

Gordon’s son “young Gordon” played for the club in the late fifties and early sixties. I started playing for the colts and twenties in about 1962/3. I went off to college in 1966 and on finishing moved to Canterbury and played rugby there. Moving to Bromley in 1977 I re-joined ‘Combe and played for the “A” XV. alongside Robin Taylor in the front-row. I then started coaching min-rugby when my sons started to want to play.

My middle-son Andrew now graces the field for ‘Combe (starting playing for the club aged 45). My two grand-children Henry and Georgia, although both keen on rugby, live in the West Midlands and play mini-rugby there. So, it looks as if the tradition of the Mellish Family playing for ‘Combe may be drawing to a close – but who knows what the future may bring.

Barry Mellish 1st May 2024