Showing posts with label Military Police. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Military Police. Show all posts

Thursday, June 24, 2021

Army sport

Until I did my national service I had never seen a game of rugby. Bear in mind that this was in the days before TV.

Whilst doing my military police training we were supposed to have Saturday afternoons free but if the camp rugby team were playing at home then we were obliged to watch. Standing on the edge of a football pitch that did not look like a football pitch and the goalposts were a strange shape as well. Not my idea of a free Saturday afternoon!

And I did not understand what was going on at all. Having played football at school and attended a few professional games I was well aware of the need to keep the ball on the pitch. These rugby players seemed to spend a lot of the time throwing the ball off the pitch and then throwing it back on again. All very strange. 

And then there were the scrums.  A very odd procedure to someone who had not seen the game previously.  The two teams seem to huddle together on the pitch and try to push their opponents until suddenly the ball is thrown into the middle and then kicked out again. Being of a logical bent even in those days I could not work out the point of that. 

After the match, both teams went into the Naafi, got drunk together, and sang bawdy songs.