Page 14 - zebra_proof

As with the best-designed club- houses, you’ll have the changing rooms nearby. In an ideal world, they’ll be in the basement of the clubhouse, with the players descending into the bowels of the building to start their pre-match rituals, before proudly striding up once again, out into light some half an hour later, resplendent in their club colours and freshly washed kit, with steely determination etched on faces for the job that they are about to do.
It goes without saying that a rugby
changing room is sacrosanct. The
inner sanctum of a club which many of
the members may never really see. It’s a cavern in which players steady themselves and prepare amidst the calm before the 80 or so minutes of storm ahead. Inside one on a match day, there’s enough going on in there for a full on assault upon the senses. The crunch of studs on concrete; the smell, always that smell of liniment or Deep Heat hanging in the air. The laughs and idle chatter until the words of a captain or a senior player harnesses the collective focus. Then there’s often an eerie silence. Some players stare into space. Some sit with eyes closed, eye-balls fluttering and writhing beneath the lids, visualising what’s about to unfold. There’s the stretch and tear of tape being wrapped around heads, shoulders, wrists and knees - seemingly holding players together, while the jerseys, lined up on pegs, await their moment and, in my experience, some nervous 6ft 8inch second row retches with nerves.
Everything and everyone has its place in a home changing room. No name plaques, of course, but certainly an unwritten seating plan on which new players or youthful recruits must find their own space for that first time, be it by trial or error. And then the riddle – as if it’s a clue to a cryptic crossword puzzle: which room inside the clubhouse doesn’t belong to the club? The answer? The “Away Changing Room”.
There’s no denying that an away changing room inside your own clubhouse or on your own turf feels...different. Alien, almost. It’s made of the same bricks and mortar but it isn’t the same. The angles of the room seem harsher and the walls are often devoid of colour and substance. Repairs carried out in the home changing room are seldom afforded to the away one (unless the repairs required are needed to protect the whole clubhouse itself). I only ever found myself in my own club’s away changing room once a season or so, when it was my turn to sweep them out after the game - or when there was a work’s party on in the summer and the room needed a rough, slap-dashed coat of paint.
14 ALL SHAPES & ZEBRAS FROM TREORCHY