Rugby Remembered.

We were scrappers, all right, not particularly loveable; we played ugly, our uniforms were worn out, and we didn’t even wear matching socks. We were as rag tag as rag tag can get but, somehow, playing u-18 rugby for Letterkenny RFC is still my favourite, abiding memory of my misspent teenage years.

Where’s Letterkenny? Well, it’s a barely recognisable dot that you’ll find in the north-west corner of a map of Ireland. It sure as hell isn’t the most glamorous place on earth; the weather was awful, it could be boring as hell and some of its denizens didn’t exactly inspire awe with their fine breeding and eloquent speech and manner. Letterkenny was ours though – our little house on haunted hill and, by God, we were proud of it.

It’s very hard to bottle the essence of a town; to just stick your finger on it and go “eureka! this is it” but what probably came closest to representing our fine hometown of ‘Kenny (as it was called by all the locals), it was us: The Letterkenny RFC U-18’s. Poorly trained, we lacked discipline and composure but we were big and mean, aggressive and obstinate, and we never backed down from a fight. We would show up at away games and I could only imagine the impression we gave off – piling out of the bus disjointedly, our weary faces attesting to our laissez-faire attitude to healthy sleep patterns, eating junk food and using language unbecoming of gentlemen. Our first impressions didn’t get better, we got kitted out in our all black attire (our junior age rugby team jersey sponsored by a night club) and we would wander out onto the field in groups. We weren’t the ’98 Chicago Bulls, we didn’t give off an air of supremacy. Teams probably saw us and thought we were easy beats—I surely can’t blame them—but they were nearly always wrong.

One of my greatest memories was taking the two and a half hour drive up to Belfast—which was the nearest big city to ‘Kenny—to play a city club in a knockout game. We followed the same old ‘Kenny routine: pitched up late and disorderly and with a collective appearance not necessarily conspicuous with winners. We didn’t get much respect from them; who the hell were we? To them we were just a bunch of farm plodders from a dumpy little town and they would just breeze past us. We won. The game was brutal and I really mean that; it was about as close to open warfare as sport can get and we beat them 15-10. I remain convinced that we got that win simply because we drew them into our game – which was the rugby equivalent of World War I trench warfare. Smash, crash, bish, bosh; we played ugly as hell but were also capable of moments of magic. It was our unpolished style of play but, hey, we came from an unpolished kind of town. Our opponents broke down in tears after the final whistle went and we were euphoric. Partly because we won but mostly, I think, because at that moment we suddenly realised how much we all meant to each other. It wasn’t a sappy, “I love you, bro” style revelation but it was a feeling that was palpable. We had done this all together; not just this game, specifically, but all our games. Despite awful coaching, awful weather, awful facilities; we still managed to win more often than not. We were a strange, amazing family filled with characters that were so unique and special.

That was the last game we all played together, and it’s probably the last time we’ll ever play together again. I moved away pretty soon after the season concluded and I honestly think I’ll never see some of those guys again. It’s enough to get me down but I know don’t really need to see them because I know how special they all were to me and how much I loved, and still love, that ill fitting, horribly faded black jersey of Letterkenny RFC U-18’s.

It’s a love that I’ll carry to my death bed.