Early Rugby Lore and Other Ramblings by Stephan L.

Lucia, the blog master, has told me that I need to get on here and blog again. And when Lucia commands I respond. That’s the trouble with having spent 25 years in the US going out with Gringas, it turns you into a complete and total mandilon. I’ve sworn off the gringas and I now only date Latinas or Swedish twins. But still when a woman like Lucia says jump, my reflex is to simply ask how high. So here I am.

Since cyberspace is free me voy a echar un rollo interminable on the founding years of Edron Rugby and whatever else occurs to me. That way Lucia, my dominatrix, will hopefully wait a while before ordering me again to blog naked wearing only a jock strap and the leather ear covers worn in the scrum.

(But before I get into further free associations let me welcome to the blog Gordon and Tanya who were close enough to my advanced years that I can fondly remember them).

Anyway back to the founding of Edron Rugby and other topics.

The first ever Edron Rugby team came on the field in spring of 1979 to play against the Evil Empire of Pompous Bastards also known as Greengates.

Addison was the coach; I think it was his first or second year teaching at Edron. Only 3 of the 15 players on the founding team had ever played rugby before. The three players were: a guy from Yugoslavia called Goran, my brother Jerome and I who had learned to play as young prepubescent boys in England. Playing rugby without the benefit of testosterone is a little like trying to have sex with a woman before puberty. It’s not that much fun, it feels kind of pointless and you don’t get much accomplished. These statements of course don’t apply to women’s rugby or to lesbian sex.

In a weird twist of fate Tanya M. now lives in Bromley England which is where the Lacor’s lived for 7 years and where the two boys learned to play the sacred sport of Rugby and where Sandrine learnt to make out with young boys.

A critical piece of trivia is that Bromley is famed not only for having weaned two Edron Rugby captains and a promiscuous nun and being the current pied a terre of Tanya M but also for being the home of the infamous shoe bomber.

The shoe bomber is the guy who is now serving a life sentence in a US prison/torture chamber for attempting to blow up his sneakers on a transatlantic flight from Paris to New York. As part of his rehabilitation in the US justice system, the working class, semi retarded cockney is getting sodomized daily by guards, prisoners, visiting military intelligence officers and the government official in charge of desecrating his Koran. The anthropologist in me has observed that Americans have a hidden obsession with sodomy. Probably something they inherited from the English. This obsession is not all bad because it allows men of other nationalities such as me to more easily get into the pants of American and English women which after puberty is a lot of fun, at least until you get to know the women.

But back to Edron Rugby.

Contrary to popular belief I was not the first Edron rugby captain. The first captain was Goran the guy from Yugoslavia (Jerome claims he was actually from Czechoslovakia but that is harder to spell so I’m going to keep him Yugoslavian). Goran played number 8 in the scrum but he left Edron in mid 1979 and Addison asked me to be captain next. I was 16 at the time.

Although not the first Edron Rugby captain, I was the first Edron Rugby player to be hospitalized for injuries incurred on the field. I can claim this with confidence because it occurred in the first scrum of the first game which Edron ever played, which for those of you not paying attention earlier was played against Gaygates. Without going into too much detail, Fuckgates took advantage of our inexperience and attempted to turn the scrum (this is achieved by one side of the scrum pushing while the other side doesn’t causing the scrum to turn). Instead of turning, the scrum collapsed. I was playing hooker at the time (guy in the middle in the front row of the scrum). As the scrum collapsed my kneecap (rotula) popped out of its socket and staid out. After about 20 minutes of everybody standing around me and various high pitched screams on my part I was taken off the field on a stretcher, put into the Tolsonetta and driven to the Hospital Español where about 8 hours later, with my kneecap still out of its socket and after various more rounds of high pitched screaming, I had my knee operated on. My rotula was placed back in its socket, and my ligaments that had stretched out from the knee dislocation where sown back together. About 12 weeks later I was back on the field, my right leg only mildly atrophied and my knee now protected with a kneepad.

Injuries on the field followed by hospitalization and a quick return to the game became an Edron tradition. In the following couple of years I recall that at least the following players where injured, hospitalized but then returned to play: Jerome broke his hand, Axbal broke his nose, and Marco A. broke his collarbone. I am sure there were others but my memory has never been my strongest asset. Jerome claims to have broken his wrist not his hand but I don’t believe him.

I’m almost done coz the human attention span has a limit. But before I go I want to memorialize that early team, at least as far as I recall. Hopefully there are not too many fictional characters that appear here:

The Scrum:
Front Row: Blake P (Closed Side Prop), Jose P S (hooker), Stephan L (Open Side Prop)
Second Row: Jerome L, Gordon M
#8: Juancho T,
Wing forwards: Jeremy S., Andrea M, and Guillaume M.
Backs:
Scrum half: Raymond, fly half and kicker Marco B., inside forward Marco A, outside forward Ritchie M, I have no idea who played on the wings.
Full Back Daniel T and, according to Diego Z, Diego Z.

So there they are in all their glory the first Edron team.

Is that enough Lucia?

Stephan