All white rugby

“I don’t know why it is, but it is a fact that the Afrikaner cultural group just seems to produce some freakishly built people with a freakish genetic make-up,” Nick Mallet famously said in 2007. Pierre Spies, Bakkies Botha, Schalk Burger and Os du Randt have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this article. But now that I’ve got your attention, I’m talking about playing rugby in the snow. (Sucker).

Accidentally catching a snowflake on your tongue while waiting under the up and under, you start to think, not about the oversized Poles thundering in towards you, not about your heart beating a bass drum, your knees knocking against each other despite longjohns under the PT shorts, shaking your frozen fringers alive before contact, you think, not about this, but about how many times you’ve been here. This open space, waiting for a ball to drop from the sky, knowing the moment is turning over on its head and judgement day is coming, but for now, this rugby ball hangs in the sky, stretched across countless untraceable memories and therefore eternal. You know that you have to catch it, though, and you are trying not to think, thinking, not thinking, thinking, not, then all of a sudden impact, and impacts follow, like waking up in a thunderstorm, thoughts jarred as cerebrum and cerebellum wrestle for control of the body, step in, step out, accelerate, make contact, your face in the snow, sludge and mud and boots, and this is what a train wreck must feel like, and, within moments, it’s gone. The second phase plays wide and someone pats you on the back: “Dobrze.”

As human activity, “snow rugby” must find itself in the same category as “night swimming”, “cliff diving”, and “mampoer for everyone”. These are usually preceded by a diffident glance, the “Are we doing this?” look, accusations of cowardice and prompt denial before the madding crowd can take over and lead to the freedom of temporary insanity. Afterwards, you might feel a little sick. But it’s worth it.

My size (read: lack of) has seen the number on the back of my jersey climbing steadily upwards — 6, 12, 13, 14, and yes, sadly, 16. I revived my rugby “career” at Stellenbosch University just as the first wave of protein supplements hit the market, and as you can imagine, the creatine peddlers found a very lucrative emerging market in the Eikestad. At the time, I happened to be sporting a pair of green boots, which to my desperate and terrified mind should have added just a little bit of camouflage and make my next step slightly less predictable*. Obviously, it didn’t work. I have the X-rays to prove it.

As luck would have it, here, in Poland, the cheapest boots I could find were — you guessed it — snow white. Now I am beyond believing that this would do me any good. And at my age, when other men are battling with the distinction between mauve and lilac, grinding out Sundays with in-laws and building foundations for the beer bellies of the future, it is unlikely that I am experiencing a sudden spell of good form. But, and we will explore some alternative explanations in a minute, it does seem as if I am finally approaching the kind of game that my primary school teacher had in mind when he said I would one day play Springbok flyhalf (he also claimed to be on first-name basis with Klaas Vakie).

The reasons for this clearly have more to do with the opponents’ game than mine. The Polish play rugby the way rhinos make love: hard, and slow. Add to this the adrenaline rush generated by 15 mad Slavs trying to get at the white-booted African, and you manage to turn out a bit of pace that every now and again propels you over the line. (Which you can’t see. Because it is snowing. But blindly diving Habana-style into a bank of snow is quite a rush). The net result of all this is that this Sunday, I am representing Posnania against a town whose name I can’t pronounce. And with my useful Polish at this moment limited to “lewo” and “brawo” it should be an interesting affair. I’ll make sure to learn the words for “hospital” and “morphine” too before then.

In the meantime, the snow has let up, and I am left as vulnerable as a chameleon on a mirror in my shiny white boots.

Now where are those green ones…?

*Conventional rugby wisdom says that as a defender, you shouldn’t look (as many instinctively do) at your opponent’s shoulders. The experienced side-stepper uses his shoulders to create the impression that he is going one way, the rest of his body waiting for you to take the bait before he accelerates towards the other. No, the real indicators of intent on a rugby field, Doc Craven said, the only ones that don’t lie, are the hips. (Pop star Shakira made a ton with a song based on Doc’s theories — without so much as a nod to the source of this wisdom). Also, this has contributed to that most unfortunately ambivalent piece of advice to centres: “Watch the hips and don’t let him come inside you.”