for Ian Diddams, and my Dad

*

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

*

 by Gail