Trevor Romain: The Old Lady, An Anglia and My Springboks Match
Playing international rugby for your country is a wonderful thing, writes Trevor Romain. I loved representing the Springboks. My friend who was an All Black, felt the same. We played against each other a number of times. He was a little stronger than me but I was a little faster. And although we were good […]
Playing international rugby for your country is a wonderful thing, writes Trevor Romain. I loved representing the Springboks. My friend who was an All Black, felt the same. We played against each other a number of times.
He was a little stronger than me but I was a little faster. And although we were good friends there was no holding back when we competed against each other.
He was particularly good at rucking and would use his boots without mercy if he came across me holding onto the ball on the ground.
There may not be a better feeling in this world than playing an international game of rugby for your country.
I remember one memorable game in particular.
It was an unseasonably warm winter’s day in Johannesburg.
The pitch was perfect, the crowd was roaring and I was feeling pretty strong that day.
I remember cradling the ball just before the kick-off and recalling names of some of the Springboks who played before me. Names like Dawie DeVilliers, Frik DuPree, Syd Nomis to name a few.
I always felt good cradling a rugby ball in my hands.
My father had been a very good rugby player and I inherited his love for the game. He played scrum half for Dale College and captained the first team. He often took my brother and I to Dale College reunions when we were little boys.
He would take us to the rugby ground and show us where he once caught the ball behind his own post and jinxed and sidestepped this way and that, finally scoring a try under the opponent’s posts. Or the time he took the ball on the blind-side of a five yard scrum and scored a winning try in the last minute of a grudge match against Grey College.
Dale would play the traditional Selbourne College game on the Saturday afternoon of the reunion and we would sit proudly next my late dad, our hero, as he sang the school war cry alongside all the schoolboys in the stands.
‘Aha aha aha.’
Other dads sang their kids lullabies when they were infants. My dad sang us the Dale College war cry.
One time, my dad got my brother and me Dale College first team rugby jerseys belonging to a certain Taljaardt and Gerber the first team scrum-half and fly-half combination. I have no clue who these chaps were but I remember their names clearly because they were boldly lettered on the back of the jerseys above their numbers.
Even though those jerseys were ten times too big for us we wore them until they practically fell off our bodies. I think my mom actually threw them away one night while we were sleeping.
That was then and this is now.
So there I was waiting for the kick-off. This time it was my name on the back of the jersey. A Springbok jersey.
The opposing fly-half placed the ball in the centre of the field and stepped back, waiting for the ref to start the game.
The whistle blew and the game was on.
The fly-half kicked the ball high and I waited, both feet firmly planted on the ground, waiting to receive the ball.
My fantasy was suddenly shattered by a scream.
“Behind you!”
I swung my head around and saw a white Ford Anglia heading straight for us at a high rate of speed.
I dived out of the way as the car whizzed by.
“That’s no way to drive on a bloody international rugby field,” yelled my friend. “Jirre, are you mal lady?”
“I don’t think she likes us playing rugby in the street in front of her house,” I said, sarcastically.
“You don’t say,” said my friend. “Especially when you kick the bloody ball over her fence every time you kick.”
We had very small front gardens in my neighbourhood and there was nowhere else to play. In our little primary school minds the street was our rugby stadium or Wembly Stadium or an international cricket field or even sometimes an athletics stadium.
We used wooden tomato boxes as wickets or hurdles or goal posts.
Our imaginations were amazingly vivid and without much effort, we were transported to the most wonderful venues in our minds, until the little old lady barreled down the road and instantly brought us back to reality.
She was a very irritated old woman. She was tiny and could not look over the steering wheel of the car. She looked through it.
She lived next door to us and got furious when our rugby ball went over the fence and rolled into her hydraengas or rododentrons or her precious damn Renunculas.
You could see the evil intent in her eyes when she aimed the car at us.
She was very consistent in her murderous driving style. She would turn the corner onto our street and as soon as the wheels were straight she would put her foot flat and accelerate. Then she would aim at anything in the street that irritated her, like little boys with rugby balls or cricket bats.
Then she would swing the car into her driveway, gun the engine to get up the little slope and screech to an immediate halt just short of the garage door. As she jammed on the brakes the back of the car would rise up, rock forward and settle back with a groan.
“Hey!” my friend yelled as the old lady got out of the car one day. “You almost killed us!”
“I know,” she barked back. “That’s what I was trying to do!”
We had absolutely no response to that statement.
So my friend and I just looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and went back to being international rugby stars.
By Trevor Romain
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