Page 87 - All Shapes & Zebras From Treorchy

a shared understanding of “just how special some days in your life are.” Now, I’m not proposing that all the amateur men and women who plough the rugby fields of Wales can claim to know what it’s like to play in a Lions test match, but the idea of a shared sacrifice along with experience and toil rings true. Friendships and camaraderie forged on the rugby pitch often last a lifetime and for those who play literally hundreds of games with each other, perhaps for well over a decade or so, they forge bonds that can’t be formed or replicated overnight, so to speak.
To be a veteran is a different experience for everyone. For me, it is to know what it’s like to be the ‘baby’ of the squad – before you mature, develop and see the team (and even the club itself) evolve throughout the years. Players, coaches and supporters – people in general - will come and go. That’s a universal rule of sport, and indeed life. But in most clubs, there’ll usually be perhaps half a dozen or so faces who remain, and who arguably help mould the identity of the club both on and off the field, for better or for worse. They remain there, watching over the progress of the club, often outstaying coach after coach, becoming mainstays of clubs as the tracksuited generals on the touchlines change.
They don’t have to be the most gifted of players, but there’s something about them that is forged by the club itself. They play on, some of them for too long, raging, if you’ll excuse my Dylan Thomas, against the dying of the rugby light. Often, the mind is sharp but the body, after decades of toil and tribulation, is unable to replicate the dizzying feats of their yesterdays.
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