THE SECRET PLAYER
THIS FORMER INTERNATIONAL GIVES US A UNIQUE INSIGHT INTO THE PRO GAME
“I’m now left with a single, sad Lions cufflink”
FOR ME, the kit you wear to go about your daily business as a professional rugby player – the rugger tops, gym shirts, singlets, tracksuits – is purely functional. As long as it doesn’t fall to pieces after two weeks and it gets through a wash without shrinking or turning pink, I’m a happy camper. Any marketing spiel about the “breathability” or mystical performanceenhancing qualities of a garment is wasted on me.
In fairness I started my career when we played rugby in what were essentially hiking socks, shorts with a button fl y (and, inexplicably, pockets) and jerseys seemingly designed for maximum absorbency. So the use of nylon still represents a brave new world.
However, for certain of my peers kit is not just “kit”. Kit is “stash”. Or at least good kit is. Stash is something to be coveted, fetishised and cherished. I know grown men, men with families, men who have played rugby at the highest level for a decade, who still approach the annual kit donation by their club or country as if it were Christmas morning. What goodies await them in their personalised sports tote, lovingly packed by an equally stash- obsessed kit man?
Even as a youngster, receiving the fi rst bag of under-18s stash, I struggled to understand the excitement. Whereas I have friends whose garages are full of every free item from the past two decades, my fi rst thought at the end of each season is which charity shop is going to be lumbered with my outsized rags? (I usually go for Cancer Research, the reasoning being that I have a one in three chance of getting it myself one day. Altruism begins at home, after all.)
My bemusement at the stash fetishists was brought back to mind by the much-publicised kitting- out day held by this year’s British & Irish Lions. Seeing them line up in maroon velvet smoking jackets couldn’t help but remind me that out of my two BIL tours I seem to have retained barely a single item. The reason: 99% of rugby kit is horrendous. In my case, the fi rst thing to go was a bizarre, ill-fi tting suede jacket with the Lions logo embossed into the hide. It was something Jim Bergerac might wear. Then gradually out went the caps (because I’m not nine), the shorts, Tracky Bs… I’m now left with a single, sad Lions cuffl ink.
There are other reasons I have no qualms in getting rid of even the most prized stash. Firstly, there is the unspoken rule among pros that to be caught in rugby kit in any non-rugger situation is social death.
Then there is the insidious danger of kit creep. Without regular culls, either via the aforementioned charity shop or, for the more venal, eBay, your house soon starts to resemble something a compulsive hoarder would be proud of. Kit creep has only been exacerbated over the past decade or so by the fact that certain manufacturers, keen to corner the niche rugby market, decided to sponsor every man and his dog, handing out boots and kit like they were sweeties.
I was happy to accept these emoluments, but mainly for the boots. Rugby boots are expensive. I was less enthused about the quarterly arrival of huge boxes of random T-shirts and tracksuits – much of which looks to be whatever they couldn’t sell at the factory shop.
One unintended consequence of all this free stuff is boot envy. Boots are one area where the modern pro can show fl air, saying: “Look at me, I’m an out-there individual unafraid to wear pink boots” – not unlike the fi ve other out-there individuals in the team. So if a particular boot sponsor isn’t coming up with the snazziest designs, there can be grumblings to agents.
As a forward I was immune, as my sponsor would only allow me to wear their dull, black eight-studders. Not quite high tops but in the same stylistic ballpark.
This narrowing of my choices was fi ne by me, and the beauty of boots is that they are less effort to dispose of. Stinky, torn, size 13s don’t tend to do so well at your local Marie Curie, so it’s straight in the bin they go.