Rugby's still a game of two halves

MY FIRST encounter with sectarian violence came by way of an unsavoury jingle in 1979.

Aged about seven, I was walking to my Catholic school when three big lads from sporting arch-rivals Waipawa Primary ran across the road, stood over me and sang the chant: "Catholic dog, sitting on a log, eating guts out of a frog".

Realising an all-boy choir perhaps wasn't the stuff of honourable bullying, the jingle was quickly followed by a few kicks.

Five years later I was again hurting after missing out on selection for St John's College 3rd form rugby squad to play Lindisfarne College. Since 1975 the two had battled it out for the coveted Father Fisher Trophy.

A friend reckoned it'd have been a "fierce" match to play in, given the "Catholics were up against the Protestants".

Just as I'd never eaten frog guts, I hadn't considered the trophy's religious undertones. The adversarial gamesmanship snowballed. Not content with just inter-school rivalry, we began billing the match variously as "the Irish against the Scots", "the Catholics against Calvinists", "Micks against the Presbyterians" and the unlikely "Rome versus Edinburgh". We reached for any motivation, real or imagined.

I thought back to that winter this morning after listening to Fijian rugby bosses again attempt to make a case for playing their banned military rugby stars at the World Cup. Their argument, to play rugby for rugby's sake, simply doesn't wash. Even as teenagers playing a team across town we couldn't extricate politics from sport.

Back in 1986, our 80 minutes of footy ended in a heartbreaking draw when a last minute St John's conversion attempt hit the post.

Today, a quarter century on and eight days out from the World Cup opener, the two schools will again square off for the Father Fisher Trophy.

This former Catholic dog will be sideline, vicariously playing, wistfully earning back his spot on the Papists' right wing.

Kick-off at St John's College, Hastings, today at 4pm. See tomorrow's edition for result.