The Preliminaries

Several years ago, just as rugby turned professional, I realised what I loved most about the game was the build-up: the banter in the studio, the fancy-dress of the crowds, the bands playing in the pouring rain out on the pitch. Nobody knows what is going to happen, least of all the players and managers. I love this liminal space of uncertainty and danger and swagger.

I wanted to celebrate this and did so in the poem below, from Nowhere Better Than This (Worple Press, 2002). I thought of it again the other day as I watched Canada coming onto the pitch in a cloudburst to play France at the Rugby World Cup.

I think this poem started off wanting to be sonnet, but then kind of fell apart, which seems appropriate. I have no memory of writing it at all.

 

 

The Preliminaries

 

I love the preliminaries at internationals,

the camera panning down the ranks of players,

arms locked behind them, bringing every follicle,

every pore to us, their nervousness,

 

the flat unashamed cry of their singing

ahead of the band and the crowd,

Vaseline glowing on their foreheads,

gumshields flashing, their hard swallowing

 

faces shivering, thighs jerking

their knees forward, the glazed

handshakes with royalty sending

them trotting off like schoolboys

 

to face the opening whistle, crowd-bay,

wind-tears, the thunder.

 

from Nowhere Better Than This (Worple Press, 2002)