One To Watch

By Ian Jackson

My wife, Leigh, had booked our son into the local Rugby Tots programme and had instructed me to go along to watch his first game. To be frank when I probably shouldn’t, our son had developed into an extremely bright but obnoxious five year old and I didn’t look forward to spending time with him but I was running short of brownie points at the time so I didn’t have a choice.

I hadn’t heard of Rugby Tots and Leigh told me that it was a gentle way of introducing youngsters to the sport. Apparently, over 55,000 children attend classes around the world and it’s designed to be fun; ‘Rugby with a Smile and Passion’ is the motto. Apart from basic skills training, the kids play a friendly form of tag rugby and today’s match was the culmination of several weekends of tuition. Leigh was hoping that the experience might help socialise the kid.

I have to admit that this didn’t sound like adequate preparation for the scary, physical combat of my personal experience but I suspended my scepticism and went along.

I settled myself close to the halfway line and turned my attention to the action on the pitch. I’d seen young children play football before and they never had any idea of ‘structure’ and ‘position’. They would tend to cluster around the ball and follow it around like a swarm of demented bees. Any scores were infrequent and largely accidental.

From the outset, it became apparent that the coaches had done a good job in this department and the opposing sides ran out and scattered into something that vaguely resembled classic formation. It was the ‘Reds’ versus the ‘Blues’ and our lad was at fullback for the Reds.

As luck would have it, the Blue’s kick off went straight towards him but, before he could gather it, one of the Blue team wingers swooped on the ball and sprinted through to score. If you’d blinked, you would have missed it. The last thing our young fellow likes is being made to look foolish so he did not take this well. 

In accordance with the rules, the Reds restarted play with a kick off and, after a few fumbling passes, the ball ended up in the hands of the winger and he immediately scored another try. When I say ‘immediately’, the ball was in his possession one second and he’d planted it triumphantly behind the try line the next. At least, that’s how it felt. He was that fast, I christened him ‘Bullet’.

Thus the pattern of the game was set. Reds kick off; pass the ball to Bullet; Bullet scores try. Reds kick off….

In an attempt to even things up a little, the referee decided to ignore the rules and make the Blues kick off, rather than the Reds, but the result was the same. Bullet had the uncanny ability of recovering the ball directly from the kick off and scoring without a hand being laid on him.

After ten minutes of this, the Reds lost interest in the proceedings as did the Blues, with the exception of Bullet who ended up playing alone; kicking off, recovering and scoring. He had the good grace to appear embarrassed by the situation and he didn’t seem to notice my son fomenting envy amongst the other players. As I said at the outset, my son was not turning into a nice person.

The talent of Bullet was quite extraordinary and I felt certain that I was watching a future Wallaby, one who had the potential to beat the All Blacks on his own. I’d love to see that.

After the game, I sought out the Head Coach in a state of some excitement.

‘Coach, did you watch the Reds versus Blues game? What about that young bloke playing on the wing for the Blues? He scored 20 tries!’

‘I did see him as we’ve had our eye on him since he joined the Tots. It’s obvious he’s a phenomenal prospect even at his young age.’

‘I want to keep an eye on his progress. What’s his name?’

‘Kent. Clark Kent’.

On the way home, I was singing the praises of young Clark, but my son, Lex, was having none of it. Said he’d cheated. I could tell from the tone of his voice that this story had a long way to run.

About the Author

Ian lives in Sydney and is retired from a career in IT, writing short stories as a hobby.

A friend in the literary world, Mark Norfolk, offered to arrange publication of his efforts.

The result is called ‘Amusings’ and can be found on Amazon and similar with some encouragingly positive reviews. Fortunately, Ian has a pension and doesn’t rely on royalties to survive.

His second collection, ‘Kindling’, is under development and should be available within a decade, based on past performance.