Rugby Mess

We were all checking our phones last Saturday morning. The sporting parents were hoping like anything that games would be cancelled. It was the start of the holidays after a grueling long term, it had been raining hard all week and it was ice-cold.

But still the text didn’t come in.

The soccer had been cancelled the previous day, there was just one more to go … but eventually as the morning cleared, I had to face facts that the rugby was still on and so, reluctantly, piled the tribe in the car.

In at Kensington Park it was like a mud bath.

“Gosh, it really should have been cancelled today,” muttered parents on the side line, watching as once pristine shirts, developed a lovely shade of brown.

On the field, the kids were having a ball. By the time our 11am game came around, the well-trampled centre field was a muddy pit in which, after scoring a try, it became standard practice for the teams to run back to their positions conducting a ‘Steve Parr-style’ skid along the way, often ending on their backsides.

Master Seven, whose soccer had been cancelled, took to kicking his football on the side line with anyone he could convert to his chosen sport. It turns out many are adept at the game, with one random lady completely ruining her once white shoes.

But it was Even-Stevens: she kicked the ball, Master Seven went charging down a slight dip in the grass to chase it … and his feet completely skidded out from under him.

He emerged a thick, wet chocolate-hued mess – on the rear at least.

“Ahh, guys, how do you think you’re getting home?” I questioned after the game, thinking of my recently-cleaned car, skint of any plastic bags or towels.

“I hope you boys realise you are being stripped to your undies and sitting on newspaper all the way home,” I heard one mother call to her boys as they continued to skid around in the mess.

Ah, good idea, I thought and remembered the newspaper I had retrieved from the letter box on the way out.

Back at the car, I opened the doors to form a ‘dressing room’ and made the protesting boys strip while I stood and quickly skimmed the back section of the newspaper. Then I lined the car with it and placed the soiled gear on top, and lined the car seats with the rest.

And with that, we drove back for hot showers, albeit with two grumpy boys not talking to their fun police mamma who made them travel home in the nuddy.