Secret Player
THE BUS trip has always been the best part of amateur rugby. It gives you some incredible memories, of odysseys back from far-off lands. Win or lose, it does not matter because you’re with your best mates enjoying a beer.
That feeling 100% translates to the professional game too, though it has undoubtedly evolved. For example, one of the best parts about playing in the Pro14 is that every second weekend you’re on a plane (well, you were before Covid. Cheers). You’re off to Belfast, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh – some of the best places in the world for a night out.
Generally you fly out the day before the game. The charter or commercial flight is set for the day after anyway, so it just makes sense to grant the boys a night out in whichever city you’re in. Avoid the dreaded one o’clock kick-off and flight back the same day and players instinctively know to sequester an emergency pair of jeans and T-shirt in their kit.
In the Premiership you can bus most places you go. Which can be good and bad, but you know that you can chuck a few beers into the hold. Attitudes to this can change from club to club, coach to coach, but the kit man can normally be given a bung by the players most weeks to sort out three or four crates of beer.
Whether you can tear in is then at the discretion of the head coach. Much depends on your performance; you might still lose, but you’ve earnt a few suds because everyone grafted. Then again, maybe not. This is an obvious shifting of the goalposts, when in the amateur sector the mantra is “win or lose, on the booze”. It doesn’t matter.
In France there are bus trips that could be up to 15 hours that you sometimes have to do straight after a game. You can find yourself on your own front door by 8am the next day. So you have to be tactical with the socialising over there.
It changes even more in Test rugby. Recovery becomes so important. When I first started playing, no matter where you were you’d obviously be staying over. That meant you could hang back after a match and have a beer with your opposite man and then, if you wanted, go out for a bit in one of Europe’s most exciting cities. But now it’s so serious.
For instance, I played one Test where the opposition didn’t even eat with us at the post-match reception in our stadium. They had food prepared for them in the changing rooms, they ate in there, climbed back on the bus to get to the airport and hustled all the way back to their own place to recover the next day. That’s how intense our sport has got.
Can we protect this at club level? You have such short turnarounds sometimes it would be crazy to have a drink. There is so much pressure on coaching teams to deliver. But we also see time and again that the best way to bring a team together is to have a beer. If done right, it truly strengthens your social fabric, helping create a feeling of brotherhood.
Of course it can get out of hand. I’ve seen people throw up, start punch-ups. ‘Naked skydiving’ is a regular sight. But as it all starts from a good place it’s always forgiven.
There is something that will never be lost, though. There will forever be a hierarchy of who sits where on the coach.
At the elite level, buses are much better equipped than the old bangers zigzagging across the amateur game. So you will get a more even spread.
The layout may be different from what you would think. On amateur buses, it’s the old boys at the back. On our buses players with more respect, age or caps get the seats with extra leg room, around nice tables where cards are dished out. The young kids might be sitting near the toilet, that stinks. Maybe the back of the bus is now reserved for players who don’t mind music pumping for 12 straight hours.
This shift towards comfort might be quite sad but that is how it’s evolved. Mind you, if there’s ever a party at the back then the young boys get kicked out and the old boys head right back up there!