Ruby humor: No son of mine is going to play with Hookers

No son of mine is going to play with Hookers

My son Jack, 5, came home from school the other week with new, important news.

"Do you know which team I go for, daddy?" he asked.

This is the moment every father dreads.
It is the moment that his son announces allegiance to a team which isn't necessarily the team his father has spent his whole life supporting.

I did it to my father, only it was even worse for him.

He was an Englishman who had grown up playing soccer at a fairly high level. I guess he would have liked me to follow suit.
But the culture of my school playground, in the island state of Tasmania, dictated that I become interested in only one sport: Australian football.
When my sporting consciousness kicked in, St Kilda was the top team in Australia's top football competition, the Victorian Football League.
More than that, St Kilda had a number of Tasmanian born and bred stars, most notably captain Darrel Baldock.

I remember my parents buying me a pair of football boots emblazoned with Baldock's name.

You would have thought that his endorsement alone would have ensured my pathway to football stardom.
But it did not happen.
I came to realise that
a) I had inherited none of my father's sporting talent and co-ordination;
b) a young fellow could get hurt on the football field.
After four games in two years, I hung up those Darrel Baldock boots and never played again.

Jack, I am happy to say, has shown sporting interest and ability for a while.

He did not walk until 16 months, but I would have backed him in a crawling race such was his speed and agility.
A few days after he started walking, we took him to a beach so he could stumble around on the sand - and he was in awe of bigger children running up and down the beach chasing a ball and throwing it to each other.

He started at pre-kindergarten in Canberra this year and has Physical Education sessions twice a week, which seems to have exposed him to a variety of sporting pursuits.
He competed in his school cross-country recently and did a lot better than I used to do. I always used to get cross-country races mixed up with orienteering, and I got lost without a compass.

Alas, the No 1 sports at Jack's school, appears to be rugby union.
There are several ovals at the school and all of them seemed to have rugby union goals.

Rugby union is as different from Australian football as Australian football is from soccer.

Coming from Tasmania, where very little rugby union is played, I know very little about the code.
I am sure they have rules, I just can't work out what they are.

Their positions are foreign to me.
Who would let their young son play a game which has a player position called a Hooker?
Rugby also has players called Props, which aren't airplanes.
It has Scrumhalves which, presumably were Scrumwholes until they were chewed up by the Props.
It has Outside Centres and Inside Centres. Clearly, no one of authority has ever pointed out that centre means right smack in the middle and it's not possible to have two of them.
Then there are Weak Side Wingers and Strong Side Wingers. How discriminatory is that? What lesson does it send to kids? Superman probably plays on one side and Clark Kent plays on the other.

To my untrained eye, the game also looks rough. But then, as I conceded back in grade four when I hung up my boots, I am a chicken.

I firmly believe, however, that Jack will want to play whatever sport his peer group is most interested in.
Chances are, at that school, that will be rugby union.
The odds doubled on Saturday, May 26, 2001, when the local rugby union team the ACT Brumbies, beat the Sharks, of South Africa, 36-6 in the final of the Super 12 at Bruce Stadium in Canberra.
There is absolutely nothing like local success to awaken a young fellow's sporting interest, eh?.

That's why I was not all that surprised when Jack brought his new, important news home from school.

"Do you know which team I go for, daddy?" he asked.

"Team? Well, no. Which team?" I said, fearing the worst.

"The Brumbies," Jack replied proudly.

"Oh, the Brumbies," I said, feigning ignorance. "And what sport do the Brumbies play, Jack?" I asked.

"Um, well," said Jack, no doubt trying to make sense of what he had heard in the playground. "They play, well, er, basketball."

Rugby-heads want more? Click on these links

A cry for help from a rugby missionary
CAPTAIN'S LOG, 22nd of June, 1852: It is now 622 cursed days since we set sail from Portsmouth, England, aboard The Lady Tighthead Prop.
Our mission was to spread the word of rugby union to the uncivilised world.

Rugby reaches for the stars
I work in the sports department of an Australian newspaper, and the other day one of our rugby reporters, Alwyn Nix, came bounding in excited by the news that scientists believed life might exist on 30 other stars in the universe.
"Go and tell someone who cares, like the science writer," I almost told him. "We’ve got a sports section to get out here. Swimming, rugby league, the lawn bowls column. Important stuff."
"This IS important," Alwyn said, or words that that effect. "Don’t you realise that if there are 30 others planets with life forms, there is a chance they play rugby too!"

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it