Ten Things I Have Discovered About Rugby Union.

[I made this up on the touchlines four and a half years ago. The brat is 18 now. And not scrawny, though still pretty short, and very mad about rugby union. I'm mostly putting it here because <3 Alas. My opinion of rugby has refined in the years since, and now includes far more slash.]

1. There are either not many rules, or so many rules that it looks as if there are not many rules.

2. It is possible to keep running with two people bigger than you hanging off your ankles. I have seen it.

3. The best bit is where they fall in the mud and sit on each other. In rugby, there is a lot of mud. This is a requirement. I think you get points for pushing people over in it, but I am not sure about this.

4. There are a lot of people involved. Thirty boys and only one rugby ball. This is perhaps why people who do not have the ball tend to sit on each other in the mud a lot.

5. To manufacture the all-important mud, you need rain. A lot of rain. This is something I do not like about being a Rugby Mum.

6. It is funny when scrums collapse. You get two big heaps of upside-down boys in the mud.

7. My scrawny fourteen-year-old kid can take other scrawny fourteen-year-old kids in both hands and drop them in the mud with one flick of his wrists.

8. Rugby backs are scrawny. Rugby forwards are not scrawny because they are in the scrum, and there is no point being in the scrum if you are not going to make a big "splat" when it all collapses in the mud. Apart from the falling in the mud part, rugby forwards do the same thing as football backs do.

9. Fourteen-year-old boys really care about rugby union. Really care about rugby union. There is a scrawny boy on my brother's team who is called Johnny, who shouts a lot about how much he cares about rugby union, and particularly about how badly his team is going about displaying its devotion to rugby union. He cares so much about rugby that he should really be playing in the under-fifteens team for al-Qaeda.

10. The winning team is the first team that wins. My brother was not on it. Perhaps he had not accumulated enough mud.