This is a reprint from an unknown source.
Back in 1978, the Wallabies were about to play the All Blacks at Eden Park. On the morning of the match, stand-in manager Ross Turnbull talked to the team and then asked the backs to leave him with the forwards. The door shut and it was just Turnbull with the pigs.
“Look,” he said, waiving an airy hand at the just departed backs, “these Phantom comic swappers and Mintie eaters, these blonde-headed fly-weights are one thing, and we will need them after the hard work is done. But the real stuff’s got to be done right here by you blokes”
The Wallabies went on on to a famous win, and that story, recounted by one of the forwards in the room, Chris Handy, has always been the best exposition of the difference between backs and forwards.
Until now. This week, Paul Jurdeezka emailed me a spoof invented by the lads from the Thirsty Third Grade of the Macquarie University Beacons. It is based on the famous court room scene in A Few Good Men, in which Colonel Jessup, in the person of Jack Nicholson, gives his thundering oration from the stand to Lieutenant Kaffee (Tom Cruise), justifying Marine atrocities.
Now though, it is a prop forward giving a namby-pamby winger the rounds of the kitchen.
“Son, in this world there are scrums. And in those scrums you need props. Are you willing to do it? As a prop, I have more responsibility that you can possibly fathom. You use words like ‘drunk’ and ‘out of shape’; those words are the very backbone of a life I spent drinking and partying in, and you see them as a punchline. You weep for your wingers and centers, and you curse the prop forward. You have that luxury of not knowing what I know: that the front row, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, wins these games you play. Truth? You can’t handle the truth, because deep down in places you don’t talk about in your selection meetings, you want me in that scrum; you need me in that scrum. I neither have the time nor inclination to explain myself to a back who scores under the very blanket of ball retention that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just bought me a beer and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you crawl into that scrum and get dirty. Either way, I DON‘T GIVE A DAMN who you think is responsible.”
Posted by Pedro at February 10, 2004 08:42 AM