by Paul Dagarin
TEN–SIX DOWN. SERIOUSLY, the backs have been a nightmare all day. There’s two minutes left. Five-metre scrum, our put-in. Anton’s at number eight. As the front rows form, he surveys his options. There’s a sizeable blind, but Gumwood’s chubby halfback is covering. Anton’s got to get that big fella onto the open. Got to get him open and go the blind.
Anton yells out, Red, red! You don’t have to be Dan Brown to break that code — it means we’re going right. Ah-ha, but we’re not! If Anton can convince his own team he’s going right, then he can surely get Chubby Half to go that way.
Chubby Half screams out: Watch eight–nine left! He’s playing with the bait, but hasn’t taken it yet. He stands his ground on the blind and gives the back of his neck a rub. Anton needs to add value to the ruse, so just as well he has a flair for drama. He’s auditioning tomorrow morning for the part of Biff in the local theatre group’s upcoming stint of Death of a Salesman.
Anton turns to his halfback, Milan, who also happens to be his brother-in-law. He tells him to stand off on the right. Mils meets his eye and doesn’t so much raise his eyebrows as open his eyes a touch wider than usual. You see, at the back of a scrum, in some parts of the world — and certainly around these parts — an eyebrow-raise is considered telegraphing your move. You may as well wheel a whiteboard out there. But Mils is canny. And he’s a nuggety little rascal too. A nuggety, sniping, canny pocket rocket.
The locks bind. The lock on the left, Johnston, is a real beanpole. He’s painted the AC/DC logo on his headgear with Wite-Out. Last season, his dad drowned. But Johnston still played that Saturday. We dedicated the game to his dad and the opposition joined us in a minute’s silence. They came up behind us and put their hands on our shoulders. Johnston took every line-out and even drove over from a ruck. We all drank in the sheds that night. Had about a hundred pizzas delivered. The Kiwi boys pulled out a guitar. Of course. Amazing how good we sound when we don’t care how good we sound.
Our Argentinean loosehead, Luis, calls the hit and the front rows engage. Mils puts the ball in and in a flash he’s back-pedalled to the right. Gumwood’s halfback plods across to mark him. Yes — he’s fallen for it! But the front rows have gone straight down. Lu’s sitting on the ground, scraping mud out of his studs. Last week he got married. His wife, Kelsie, is a flight attendant and a complete spunk. They met two years ago on Mad Monday. Kelsie speaks Spanish. Apparently all flight attendants need to be able to speak another language — even if they’re only flying from Darwin to Gove. It’s just part of the job.
Hold them up, front row. It’s Anton. Keep them up, boys. No mention of the rightie move. He doesn’t want to overplay his hand. He doesn’t want to push the bluff.
The front row forms again and there’s some words with Gumwood. Some bleep’s calling someone a bleep. No one bleeping cares.
Actually, that mouthy bleep is Dion, our featherweight hooker. He’s a feisty devil. Broke his hand earlier in the season and turned up to play with his cast wrapped up in the cut-off leg of an old wetsuit. The ref told him he must be joking. But Mal Meninga was always playing with a broken arm! Yeah, said the ref, but he didn’t have to bind in the front row, did he? Dion couldn’t believe it. He stood there for ages with disbelief pulling his jaw down and this black-and-orange neoprene around his hand flapping in the breeze. Still had the zipper on it. He had to be led off the field. His arm’s okay now, though. His throws are spot-on and he’s just superb in the tight-loose. Scoops up the ball and sets off on some great little runs. He makes tackles too — right out on the wings. Obviously you lose a bit in the scrums, but that’s okay. Well, it’s not really okay, but you can’t have everything.
The tighthead is Faielu. He’s new to the club. We needed some go-forward and he’s got it, boy. But he’s sold his Sydney scaffolding business for a fortune and is on his way to Tonga to start an eco-tourism venture. Construction has already begun on these great Thai-style bungalows on stilts that his wife designed. But the site was invaded by mangrove crabs and some hairy American backpackers have been camping nearby, smoking pot and generally being annoying. Faielu’s anxious to get back over there and sort it out.
Big scrum. Huge scrum! Now, piggies! It’s the blindside and skipper, Deano. He knows exactly what Anton and Mils are up to. He’s worked with Mils on and off for years, and three years ago they started their own architecture and building firm. It’s going really well.
The hit goes on and it’s a beauty. Eight together, like an enormous fist. No discomfort. No pain. Just timing. Gumwood shunts straight back a foot and Anton knows there are no excuses. In the back of his throat, joy mixes with the fear of failure.
Michelle the physio is going berserk on the sidelines. She’s waving a big pseudo-NRL flag made from an old double sheet like it weighs nothing. Like it’s an enormous tissue. She’s incredibly buff. There’s a mob of kids squirting water bottles so it looks like skyrockets going off. The lower graders running the sausage sizzle are going nuts and clicking their tongs and ignoring the onions that have fallen into the burners. The general feeling that something is happening has mingled with burned onions and is filling the air.
Fiona’s running the touch; she has to remain neutral but it’s pretty hard. Her boyfriend, Adrian, is playing at outside-centre and her old boyfriend, Johnston, is at lock. God, a couple of years ago she would never have believed it possible. It’s amazing how life turns out.
The under-tens are all sitting up on the roof of the shed where the club locks up the tackle bags and scrum machine and does some training in wet weather. One day one of those kids is going to fall through that tin roof, thinks Mils’s wife, Mary-Anne, who is with her dog on the far touch. She’s got one of those plastic ball-throwers with an old tennis ball in its socket; the dog is just fixated on that ball even though Mary-Anne is lost in the game and has barely chucked it since Gumwood scored that bloody intercept. She rubs her eyes. That smoke is really irritating.
Mils feeds the scrum, falls back on the open and starts screaming for it. Deano pats Luis on his ribs. Get up, mate. Up, mate. He’s whispering. Lu’s been getting a hard time at loosehead all game, but he feels something here. Johnston had been packing too low, slipping right down onto the back of Lu’s thighs and it was jackknifing things. But Johnston’s right now. Right on his bum and in line with his spine. Lu is an oak dining-room table. The push is on. The whole friggin’ scrum is singing. Estupendo! Lu can feel the opposition tighthead almost lift off the ground. He moves him back, but not too far because he doesn’t want it to go through the ninety. He’s in control now — we all are.
Mils runs across to the blindside screaming for the ball. Anton picks up from the back and goes. Deano breaks and goes with him. There’s a slight southerly and it’ll get pretty cold about ten minutes after the final whistle. You can feel the heaviness of the air already. But you’re enveloped in your work now. It could be hailing and it wouldn’t really bother you. There’s a graze down most of your left thigh that you got cleaning out a ruck on the rock-hard cricket-pitch. You know it’s going to sting tonight. But that’s tonight. Right now, the phoenix palms that line the park are reaching up and leaning this way and that, like they are contesting a lineout. All Gumwood’s kids are playing on the scrum machine. The wind’s pushing spent strips of electrical tape in cartwheels down the sidelines. We could be onto something here. We’re gone. We’re away. We’re free.