Child poverty, international terrorism, rogue states, Young criminals, Clowns, Geese and Austin Healy. Things of pure evil created by the devil but other than waiting around SPAR and duffing up the little scrotes or using some of my chums to create regime change in Burma, things I can do nothing or very little about.
I also know nothing about them really except that Healy is a gob shite and is losing all his hair – ha ha and terrorism is bad unless it’s done by people burning down English peoples second homes. While I am not belittling these huge world evils, to me there is an evil so all consuming, so life changing that every time it is mentioned I feel my chest tightening and my heart beat quickens to a rate that makes Chris Parry’s blackened heart rate seem sedate.
I can feel the bile of hatred raise to the upper reaches of my throat even contemplating writing it, but write it I must because this evil is not mother natures design to keep us down, it is not even this stupid arrogant, ignorant Labour Governments fault although they must be kicking themselves that they never thought of it to begin with. This evil is the creation of greed, of money, a creation of faceless executives who know nothing of the beautiful thing they are hell bent in destroying.
Love chickens and non affiliated rugby boys I bring you
Sunday international rugby!!!
There I have written it now.
What these morons don’t realise is that international Rugby Union isn’t just 80 minutes of a sports match, it isn’t turn up, sit down, cheer and leave for home, neither is it; get up, go down, turn on television, watch match, scratch bollocks and then go to bed.
Its weeks of piss taking and banter, its weeks of organising trips away or piss ups at home. It’s the busy streets of Twickers, the pinnacle of piss ups in Edinburgh, the mental birds of Ireland and the easy American students of Paris….mmmm Paris. But tours are something I will leave to others; I will concentrate on the Cardiff weekend.
You see these fuckheads don’t understand that more than anything it is about the weekend, it is about friendship, about camaraderie, something lost in these sterile days of 9 to 5 and health and safety. Now all that remains is this game, our game, these 80 minutes of conflict, of attack and defence when 15 men represent us on the field of battle and use everything they have to compete and above all, win.
For the Cardiff matches you see the Friday is the day of the gathering, most of the day spent on phone calls, on texts and on emails. It’s about organising lifts or booking tickets. Those overtime hours are exchanged for flexi time and an early finish is part of the course. You have the bois who take the day off and arrive like kids on Christmas morning, drop their ironed shirts at the house and go straight to the pubs and wait as the day goes by and their numbers grow until early evening arrives and the main group of bois are there.
As we all know Friday for the Love chickens is the
“What we will do, we will have a few pints and get to bed early as we have a big day on Saturday.”
Its bollocks, it’s as unlikely as Tew making it to midnight or Roberts wiping his arse properly.
It is a night of furious drinking, stories and laughter in suburban pubs before the gathering head into town, Fat Mike runs off, Phil Kite can’t see properly and we all end up in what I like to call Valhalla (Kiwis). We don’t have an early night we roll in at 4 o clock in the morning having spent £20 each in Charleston’s steak house buying shoe leather with a packet sauce. But it doesn’t matter because we were allowed to sing and when we get back, we sleep, we sleep the drunken sleep of the dead. The international weekend sleep of
Lie down
Close eye
Open eye
Get up
In reality this lasts about 5 hours but in the head of the Love chicken it seems about 4 minutes.
Big bum boys like Neil ‘the King of the Gays’ Evans has usually gone home at 9 o clock and had about 10 hours sleep in his cumquat face mask so many are woken (especially me) by the smug gits phone call at half eight in the morning (For our American members that’s half past eight not four o’clock).
The Ambleston Yeti AKA Morgs had a 5 hour sleep head start as he normally falls asleep as soon as he gets into Kiwis.
Most of us wake up early automatically, this is what we have been waiting for, and the adrenaline pushes up, sends us to the shower and prepares us for the day. The knowledge that you will spend the whole day surrounded by friends that you trust and love, talking about rugby, women and regaling each other of stories that you all know as you were all involved. Friends who know you better than you know yourself and that you would trust with your life.
(disclaimer – while I would trust King of the Gays with my life, I wouldn’t trust him with my mobile phone or him holding a ladder for me – you can just see his devilish grin………………………..).
Visits to the greasy spoon and bookies are part of the tradition and a pre-cursor to the lift to the pub. We arrive at opening time and sit there for hours discussing, cajoling and in the back of our minds is the rugby, our raison d’etre and before you know it………………..its here. The warm feeling of looking up and seeing Grandstand on the Telly in the pub brings an inward smile and you know its time as people jostle for seats as the teams run on the pitch and the voices go from loud to louder.
In an instant it goes to silence because now its time for the anthems. Watching the pride, passion and focus of the teams singing the anthems fires the blood. As a Welshman one of the great sadnesses is that the WRU brings in a singer to help us sing. We are Welsh, we don’t need it. It’s in the genes, if we can’t bloody sing our national anthem than let’s pack up and go home (like we did in the 90’s). While I love Kathryn Jenkins or Charlotte Church to bits I doubt if the players are fired by a single female voice rather than the combined effort of 50 thousand fans willing them on to victory.
Then, the whistle blows and for 40 minutes the world is forgotten, work, family, missus, commitments, mortgage, bills pushed to the back of the mind by the gladiatorial battle that presents itself before you. Power, intelligence and skill combine and when the final whistle goes your appetite for competition is sated.
The depression of loss doesn’t last too long while the elation of victory will last until the next match. Drinking re-starts in earnest and from now on its pub to pub to pub and in true Love chicken styley groups split into smaller groups spreading through shitty pubs, shiny bars, gleaming nightclubs and kiwis.
By the ending of the night we have done everything we are allowed to do and we find ourselves in Chip Alley. Historians state that only the Pyramids remain from the old Seven Wonders of the World however Tacitus or any of the old historians never witnessed the stench and vitality of Chip Alley. (See next blog for new wonders).
Here you will taste the culinary delight known to punters as ‘Orange Curry’. At the end of the night you will end up with this orange curry on your shiny shirt, so you may as well eat the shite anyway – even if the day before the meat on your plastic plate had a name, a name tag and a kennel.
And finally its home, stories of nakedness, debauchery, boozing and shenanigans, of grown men wetting their pants (could 4 of us please put up our hands) and dance moves that could only be called ‘Freestyle’ and then we witness the end of international weekend. Sunday is a day for Fergatron to be stuck in his pants and watch shite Sunday telly; it’s also time for him to open the door to London Welsh after a night of him being a dirty dog.
You can’t have this with Sunday rugby. Yes you can go out on Friday and Saturday but you can you do this anytime. It is the rugby on the Saturday that brings the bad and the brilliant down to the capital.
On Sunday the atmosphere is damp, more people stay at home, sure you can still get drunk but do you go out with that intention or do you start thinking I am not going to have a big one – that’s not the attitude, because even if you do its not with the gusto of a Saturday. I remember being on tour in Scotland and the game was on a Sunday. Yes the Friday and Saturday were great but the Sunday was…….wrong. One of the major plusses with rugby is that after the game is finished you go on the beer (Chardonnay if you are Neil) with opposition supporters but there was no atmos with a lot of Scots worried about work. It’s a disgrace. Three games in one day is not the end of the world and the game should be there for the people.
As Love chickens we must fight this injustice – it is our future fun they play with and it must stop. What next? The Six Nations during the week? So we do what rugby bois have done since William Web Ellis told the powers to be to ‘swivel’ and ran with the ball, we will plan for Scotland and plan for the home match against the English and then we will drink and be happy.
In these days of external threats and internal apathy, we as proper blokes must rise up and meet these head on because
we’se is men but theys is just a bunch of puffs
I also know nothing about them really except that Healy is a gob shite and is losing all his hair – ha ha and terrorism is bad unless it’s done by people burning down English peoples second homes. While I am not belittling these huge world evils, to me there is an evil so all consuming, so life changing that every time it is mentioned I feel my chest tightening and my heart beat quickens to a rate that makes Chris Parry’s blackened heart rate seem sedate.
I can feel the bile of hatred raise to the upper reaches of my throat even contemplating writing it, but write it I must because this evil is not mother natures design to keep us down, it is not even this stupid arrogant, ignorant Labour Governments fault although they must be kicking themselves that they never thought of it to begin with. This evil is the creation of greed, of money, a creation of faceless executives who know nothing of the beautiful thing they are hell bent in destroying.
Love chickens and non affiliated rugby boys I bring you
Sunday international rugby!!!
There I have written it now.
What these morons don’t realise is that international Rugby Union isn’t just 80 minutes of a sports match, it isn’t turn up, sit down, cheer and leave for home, neither is it; get up, go down, turn on television, watch match, scratch bollocks and then go to bed.
Its weeks of piss taking and banter, its weeks of organising trips away or piss ups at home. It’s the busy streets of Twickers, the pinnacle of piss ups in Edinburgh, the mental birds of Ireland and the easy American students of Paris….mmmm Paris. But tours are something I will leave to others; I will concentrate on the Cardiff weekend.
You see these fuckheads don’t understand that more than anything it is about the weekend, it is about friendship, about camaraderie, something lost in these sterile days of 9 to 5 and health and safety. Now all that remains is this game, our game, these 80 minutes of conflict, of attack and defence when 15 men represent us on the field of battle and use everything they have to compete and above all, win.
For the Cardiff matches you see the Friday is the day of the gathering, most of the day spent on phone calls, on texts and on emails. It’s about organising lifts or booking tickets. Those overtime hours are exchanged for flexi time and an early finish is part of the course. You have the bois who take the day off and arrive like kids on Christmas morning, drop their ironed shirts at the house and go straight to the pubs and wait as the day goes by and their numbers grow until early evening arrives and the main group of bois are there.
As we all know Friday for the Love chickens is the
“What we will do, we will have a few pints and get to bed early as we have a big day on Saturday.”
Its bollocks, it’s as unlikely as Tew making it to midnight or Roberts wiping his arse properly.
It is a night of furious drinking, stories and laughter in suburban pubs before the gathering head into town, Fat Mike runs off, Phil Kite can’t see properly and we all end up in what I like to call Valhalla (Kiwis). We don’t have an early night we roll in at 4 o clock in the morning having spent £20 each in Charleston’s steak house buying shoe leather with a packet sauce. But it doesn’t matter because we were allowed to sing and when we get back, we sleep, we sleep the drunken sleep of the dead. The international weekend sleep of
Lie down
Close eye
Open eye
Get up
In reality this lasts about 5 hours but in the head of the Love chicken it seems about 4 minutes.
Big bum boys like Neil ‘the King of the Gays’ Evans has usually gone home at 9 o clock and had about 10 hours sleep in his cumquat face mask so many are woken (especially me) by the smug gits phone call at half eight in the morning (For our American members that’s half past eight not four o’clock).
The Ambleston Yeti AKA Morgs had a 5 hour sleep head start as he normally falls asleep as soon as he gets into Kiwis.
Most of us wake up early automatically, this is what we have been waiting for, and the adrenaline pushes up, sends us to the shower and prepares us for the day. The knowledge that you will spend the whole day surrounded by friends that you trust and love, talking about rugby, women and regaling each other of stories that you all know as you were all involved. Friends who know you better than you know yourself and that you would trust with your life.
(disclaimer – while I would trust King of the Gays with my life, I wouldn’t trust him with my mobile phone or him holding a ladder for me – you can just see his devilish grin………………………..).
Visits to the greasy spoon and bookies are part of the tradition and a pre-cursor to the lift to the pub. We arrive at opening time and sit there for hours discussing, cajoling and in the back of our minds is the rugby, our raison d’etre and before you know it………………..its here. The warm feeling of looking up and seeing Grandstand on the Telly in the pub brings an inward smile and you know its time as people jostle for seats as the teams run on the pitch and the voices go from loud to louder.
In an instant it goes to silence because now its time for the anthems. Watching the pride, passion and focus of the teams singing the anthems fires the blood. As a Welshman one of the great sadnesses is that the WRU brings in a singer to help us sing. We are Welsh, we don’t need it. It’s in the genes, if we can’t bloody sing our national anthem than let’s pack up and go home (like we did in the 90’s). While I love Kathryn Jenkins or Charlotte Church to bits I doubt if the players are fired by a single female voice rather than the combined effort of 50 thousand fans willing them on to victory.
Then, the whistle blows and for 40 minutes the world is forgotten, work, family, missus, commitments, mortgage, bills pushed to the back of the mind by the gladiatorial battle that presents itself before you. Power, intelligence and skill combine and when the final whistle goes your appetite for competition is sated.
The depression of loss doesn’t last too long while the elation of victory will last until the next match. Drinking re-starts in earnest and from now on its pub to pub to pub and in true Love chicken styley groups split into smaller groups spreading through shitty pubs, shiny bars, gleaming nightclubs and kiwis.
By the ending of the night we have done everything we are allowed to do and we find ourselves in Chip Alley. Historians state that only the Pyramids remain from the old Seven Wonders of the World however Tacitus or any of the old historians never witnessed the stench and vitality of Chip Alley. (See next blog for new wonders).
Here you will taste the culinary delight known to punters as ‘Orange Curry’. At the end of the night you will end up with this orange curry on your shiny shirt, so you may as well eat the shite anyway – even if the day before the meat on your plastic plate had a name, a name tag and a kennel.
And finally its home, stories of nakedness, debauchery, boozing and shenanigans, of grown men wetting their pants (could 4 of us please put up our hands) and dance moves that could only be called ‘Freestyle’ and then we witness the end of international weekend. Sunday is a day for Fergatron to be stuck in his pants and watch shite Sunday telly; it’s also time for him to open the door to London Welsh after a night of him being a dirty dog.
You can’t have this with Sunday rugby. Yes you can go out on Friday and Saturday but you can you do this anytime. It is the rugby on the Saturday that brings the bad and the brilliant down to the capital.
On Sunday the atmosphere is damp, more people stay at home, sure you can still get drunk but do you go out with that intention or do you start thinking I am not going to have a big one – that’s not the attitude, because even if you do its not with the gusto of a Saturday. I remember being on tour in Scotland and the game was on a Sunday. Yes the Friday and Saturday were great but the Sunday was…….wrong. One of the major plusses with rugby is that after the game is finished you go on the beer (Chardonnay if you are Neil) with opposition supporters but there was no atmos with a lot of Scots worried about work. It’s a disgrace. Three games in one day is not the end of the world and the game should be there for the people.
As Love chickens we must fight this injustice – it is our future fun they play with and it must stop. What next? The Six Nations during the week? So we do what rugby bois have done since William Web Ellis told the powers to be to ‘swivel’ and ran with the ball, we will plan for Scotland and plan for the home match against the English and then we will drink and be happy.
In these days of external threats and internal apathy, we as proper blokes must rise up and meet these head on because
we’se is men but theys is just a bunch of puffs
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