Blimey it’s been five years since I last put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard?  So what’s been happening since we last met?  Well we went up a division and have come down a couple.  I’m still here, exiled in the Midlands, working back at the same desk I left ten years ago, and living in the same draughty castle, except there’s now a feminine touch to the place. 

Why did I stop writing?  Good question, easy to blame the pressure of the job, married life taking up too much time, rising petrol and travel costs, not enough support from certain quarters, that sort of thing but it would be all pants.  To be brutally honest I stopped writing about rugby union because I stopped enjoying it. Without a level of passion for the sport, any subject in fact, then it’s very difficult to wax lyrically.

So why did I fall out of love with the game?  The game started to lose its mojo a few months into our second season in National Division 2 back in 2004.  The sense of adventure of visiting away games ceased to exist, many of these newer club grounds we found ourselves visiting lacked charm, many purely sterile.  These new grounds don’t reflect the warmth of the local community, they reflect a cold ambition to win and succeed to progress, there was no joy or character and so my interest waned.  Give me a Wharfedale over Doncaster any day; these are places where the true spirit of rugby lies, not in the concrete slabs of the new Coventry ground; you walk into places like Rosslyn Park and you feel the heritage and esprit de corps come up and shake you warmly by the hand.  In Nottingham three years ago, my love of rugby hit rock bottom; there we were, 300 of us, in a football stadium on a Sunday afternoon, the moon had a better atmosphere that day.  I’m sure any first time visitor to the game that day will have ensured it was also their last; no bar, no banter and they had one of those wretched over sized cartoon mascots; not a parrot or a squid or something vaguely amusing for the kids but some bloke adorned as an eight foot mobile phone.  And then at half-time the Nottingham people entertained us with cheerleaders….

People know I have an abundant hatred of the use of cheerleaders in this country, if you go to a grid-iron game in the States you’ll see buxom blondes being thrown in the air and performing multiple silhouettes before being caught by their peers (note to self – can we learn any techniques from the Dallas Cowboy cheerleading coaches? Look up ‘awesome cheerleading stunts’ on “YouTube”- get that girl in our line-outs) but here we have to make do with 14 year olds in the middle of winter waving a couple of pom-poms; it isn’t attractive, it isn’t rousing, in fact I find it very creepy….     

….And that was the end of the love affair. Since then the numbers of games I attended could be counted on one hand.

At the beginning of last season I received a phone call from Konrad Gibbon, my partner-in-crime at many far-flung away games.  Most times these calls are typical bloke calls; "are you watching such-and-such on telly?" "Could you help out in the pub quiz?" "Do you have so-and-so's number?" and " [I've had eight pints],I love you, I love you, you're my best mate you are".  This one however was different – would I be interested in joining him in making the trip to Penzance in December to watch the 'Loo-Mounts Bay game?  Now Kon and I do like our little “Top Gear” style challenges, we drove an 18 year old Golf I'd bought for £50 to Launceston and back to Leamington in a day once and this challenge was to be no different.  The task: to drive 300 miles to Penzance, stay over night, go out on the lash and return the next day.  The “Loo-mobile” this time?  A Smart car.  The car's reliability caused no fear, the fact Kon and I are over 15 stone each, of broad shoulder and flatulent nature, he is a flippant passenger whilst I take driving seriously and we were to be pressed into a car that looks like it has been shrunk in the wash more often than a bachelor's woolly sweater for five hours at a time, the loss of friendship was the fear.  In the end we didn't just stop at Penzance we carried on 'til the end of the civilised world, we made it to Land's End only to find the bar shut and the local bakery closed, so no pint, let alone a pork pie.  I'm pleased to say the alliance continues even if Gibbon did snore the whole way back from Exeter to Evesham.

Our time in Penzance was fantastic, we lost the game but so what?  At 2pm we walked through the gates, standing proud in our Waterloo shirts and made for the bar.  The clocks didn't stop, the jukebox didn't silence, we couldn't hear a dog barking in the distance, nor the cemetery bell and tumbleweed didn't blow through the bar but we did get some funny looks.  Just before kick-off a child came up to us, pointed and ran off.  He returned later with some friends to poke and sniff us. Midway though the first half a local came up to us asked if we'd travelled from Liverpool to watch the game. I hate this question, we always get this question, I wish we could answer with a simple 'yes' but what follows is in effect a 'no' which comes across as a long ramble justifying our allegiances to the “Boys from Blundellsands”; about me coming from Leamington but following Waterloo because I grew up in the neighbourhood, a drop kick from the ground, and I could hear the crowds a-calling as I earned my pocket money in the garden.  Konrad then explains he lives on the Isle of Man but he sails to home games and flies to Birmingham and then onto the away games.  No wonder people look at us as though we are insane, the fact we are mad doesn't help – would any sane person travel 600 miles to watch a tier 3 rugby game?  Then the flood gates opened, from 3pm until 10pm we did not have to buy a single drink, since we had ventured forth into Cornwall in the depths of winter, the locals, fellow rugby supporters, in return would show no limits in their hospitality.  People of Penzance, we salute you – thank you.

We made many new friends that day so when Mounts Bay announced they were winding up, I was deeply saddened, it was one of the best rugby days out I have ever had though my respect for the people at the club has gone up ten-fold, they had the courage to say "enough is enough, we aren't putting up with this any more".  I hope their ground is still there and has 30 muddied oafs running around it on a regular basis; it's a nice ground with good people; Penzance without regular rugby would not make the world a better place.  Same goes for Halifax even though I never enjoyed going to the place, had a bit of a moment with some idiot there on my first visit, but the crowd that mingled with us in our battles love their rugby.  The white rose mob have withdrawn from the league system, again due to finances, but have decided to start from the bottom up; grudging respect to the Yorkshire people from this Lancastrian for taking the decision.  If those grounds are now up for sale as housing plots then all is not well; in both cases I hope there is in the neighbourhood some eight year old listening to the occasional shout from the ground whilst earning his pocket money and wondering what the noise is all about.

Near the end of last season, I visited Birmingham Solihull, by now we were just about fielding a team and we were up against the league leaders.  We were thumped but the boys in green never gave up, not until the final whistle, the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have learnt a lesson or two in tenacity from us that day.  I was expecting some Brummie wag to make a comment and I had my retort pre-planned yet it never came, what I didn't expect was an invitation to the bar for a drink and some food from the Club President before my long journey back to, er, the local shopping centre, two miles away, where I was meeting Mrs D – they didn't know I wasn’t heading back up the M6 and if someone is offering free food, well…. be rude not to.

And that was it, I stood in the bar, our hosts weren’t gloating, me not being defeatist, not making apologies for our performance and not clinging to past glories; we stood enjoying a sandwich and a pint, laughing about our shared tribulations and then the penny dropped.  I hadn't lost my faith in Waterloo, never had, what I had lost for five years was my faith in the game of rugby.  On those two sunny afternoons in Solihull and Mounts Bay the embers of belief started to glow brightly again and that my friends is why I'm back.  You can stick your football grounds, your anonymous concrete grandstands, those stupid mascots and parading school children - the heart and soul of rugby isn’t just out there on the windswept pitches, it’s in the clubhouses across the lands and with the spectators who come, applaud and banter with each other every week; the game at this level is a great game, a noble game, a game to be cherished and savoured for its own identity.  I love it and that’s why I’m writing again.   

That and the fact the directors of mywaterloorugby.com were going to give me a wedgie if I didn't write something.

Graham