So what’s the crack with rugby?

by Gail Foster, Devizes, UK

So what’s the crack with rugby?
My father used to play
He’d come home with an injury
Every other day

My mother used to worry
He was quite deaf to her fears
Her futile protestations fell
On cauliflower ears

Oh so many broken bones
As trophies he would wear
Those would be the only times
I heard my mother swear

My father didn’t drink much
He didn’t do the pub
But he’d sink some with the other lads
In the rugby club

He had a book of rugby songs
Some of them were crude
Dinah, Dinah, show us yer leg
And other ones more rude

A weird way to learn about
Sex and funny stuff
Sex ed in the seventies
Was really pretty rough

Now I watch a rugby game
And find the blokes quite hot
Got to love a massive thigh
And firmly muscled bott

Oh how they thunder up the pitch
And grunt and sweat and shout
Got to love testosterone
It’s what it’s all about

Never mind the odd shaped ball
Shape doesn’t make me frown
It’s how they chuck the thing that counts
And how they smack it down

The scrum’s a thing to marvel at
A tad homo erotic
What if someone breaks their neck
Not sport for the neurotic

And then there is the line dancing
And shouting things in code
Like massive noisy warriors
With faces streaked with woad

Not partial to the gumshields
I suppose they save the grief
Of ruining a toothpaste smile
And choking on the teeth

The thing I don’t quite understand
Is how they pass the ball
What’s the crack with backwards?
I don’t get that at all

I’m a girl who loves a tryer
It’s hardly a perversion
It just don’t get more exciting
Than a finely placed conversion

Snorting mist like horses
Hot blokes running free
Imagine the baths afterwards
Oh it’s all too much for me

I have memories of autumn
Fields all churned up with mud
My Dad and Son played rugby
There’s some rugby in my blood

So, here’s my final word on this
Rugby’s hot, but makes me sad
For when I think of rugby
It reminds me of my Dad

* Love you, Dad