Anecdotes of tests gone by.

In 1962 and they were lining up in the
tunnel before the Newlands test.

Willie-John McBride – who in his biography
sketches Mof as a “a prop forward who made an
angry bull rhino in a game park look friendly -
tried to make conversation.

“Mof, there’s not a lot of grass out there.”

He was ignored, thought the man without a neck
was a little deaf and repeated the statement.

Mof didn’t look back at him, just said out of
the side of his mouth:
“I didn’t come here to bloody graze.”

kiakahaaotearoa wrote:
...
Perfect Woman Competition in New Zealand

The owner of a bar in Wanaka is holding a competition to find the 'perfect woman', the prize is $NZ 1,000 and tickets for a rugby game.

Amongst the tasks the aspirants will be expected to undertake are:

Back a trailer load of hay
Change a car tyre
Clear a pool table
Darn a sock
Lift a ram into shearing position
http://www.guy-sports.com/humor/sports/sports_rugby.htm

Triangulation wrote:We're going to tear those boys apart. Message pinned up on the changing room wall by England skipper Will Carling before his team ran out to face the All Blacks in the 1995 World Cup semi-final in Cape Town. It took at least 70 seconds for New Zealand to score their first try as they demolished England 45-29

In fairness to Will Carling he did put two tries on New Zealand himself that day.

So the story goes....that at the captains run before THAT game such was the professionalism of English (as opposed to SH nations' shamateurism) rugby that the preparation for dealing with Lomu went thus......one of the England forwards sauntered over to the backs and asked if they had Lomu covered. "dont worry we've got it sorted" came the reply. And that was that!

Humourous Quotes:

After being asked if he had anything to add to an inspiring team talk, “Ja, anyone know where I can get an engine for a Toyota Corolla?” – Frans “Domkrag” Erasmus (Ou Grote), late Springbok prop.

“Nobody in rugby should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.” – Jono Gibbs

“I’m going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes.” – Rodney So’ialo on University

“You guys line up alphabetically by height” – Colin Cooper – Hurricanes coach

“You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle.” – Colin Cooper – Hurricanes coach

“He’s a guy who gets up at six o’clock in the morning regardless of what time it is.” – Colin Cooper on Paul Tito

Chris Masoe (Hurricanes) on whether he had visited the Pyramids during his visit to Egypt: “I can’t really remember the names of the clubs that we went to.”

Kevin Senio (Auckland), on Night Rugby vs Day Games “It’s basically the same, just darker.”

David Nucifora (Auckland) talking about Troy Flavell “I told him, ‘Son, what is it with you. Is it ignorance or apathy?’ He said, ‘David, I don’t know and I don’t care.’

David Holwell (Hurricanes) when asked about the upcoming season: “I want to reach for 150 or 200 points this season, whichever comes first.”

“Andy Ellis – the 21 year old, who turned 22 a few weeks ago” – Murray Mexted

“Colin has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator.” – Ma’a Nonu

“He scored that try after only 22 seconds – totally against the run of play.” – Murray Mexted

“We actually got the winning try three minutes from the end but then they scored.” – Phil Waugh

“I’ve never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.” – Jerry Collins

“That kick was absolutely unique, except for the one before it which was identical.” – Tony Brown

“I owe a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.” – Tana Umaga

“Sure there have been injuries and deaths in rugby – but none of them serious.” – Doc Mayhew

“If history repeats itself, I should think we can expect the same thing again.” – Anton Oliver

“I would not say he (Rico Gear) is the best left winger in the Super 14, but there are none better.” – Murray Mexted

“I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat.” – Ewan McKenzie

Murray Deaker: “Have you ever thought of writing your autobiography?”
Tana Umaga: “On what?”

“Well, either side could win it, or it could be a draw.” – Murray Mexted

“Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer.” – Murray Mexted

“Every time I went to tackle him, Horrocks went one way, Taylor went the other, and all I got was the bloody hyphen.” – Nick England on trying to stop Phil Horrocks-Taylor

“We’ve lost seven of our last eight matches. Only team that we’ve beaten was Western Samoa. Good job we didn’t play the whole of Samoa.” – Gareth Davies

“The main difference between playing League and Union is that now I get my hangovers on Monday instead of Sunday.” – Tom David

“In my time, I’ve had my knee out, broken my collarbone, had my nose smashed, a rib broken, lost a few teeth, and ricked my back; but as soon as I get a bit of bad luck I’m going to quit the game.” – J. W. Robinson

“To play rugby you need three things: a good pass, a good tackle and a good excuse.” – Anon

On his successors in the Oxford University backs: “I’ve seen better centres in a box of Black Magic.” – Joe McPartlin

After John Jeffrey had ‘dropped and badly damaged’ the Calcutta Cup: “It will now have to be called the Calcutta Shield.” – Bob Munro

“I think you enjoy the game more if you don’t know the rules. Anyway, you’re on the same wavelength as the referees.” – Jonathan Davies

On taking over as Batley chairman: “Not many people in Batley speak Latin, so the first thing we did was change the motto.” – Stephen Ball

“The advantage law is the best law in rugby, because it lets you ignore all the others for the good of the game.” – Derek Robinson

“There is far too much talk about good ball and bad ball. In my opinion, good ball is when you have possession and bad ball is when the opposition have it.” – Dick Jeeps

“Remember that rugby is a team game; all 14 of you make sure you pass the ball to Jonah.” – Fax to the All Blacks before the 1995 World Cup semi-final.

“I think Brian Moore’s gnashers are the kind you get from a DIY shop and hammer in yourself. He is the only player we have who looks like a French forward.” – Former England prop Paul Rendall on his front row colleague.

“You’ve got to get your first tackle in early, even if it’s late.” – Welsh hardman Ray Gravell explains his rugby philosophy.

“I played ten injury-free years between the ages of 12 and 22. Then, suddenly, it seemed like I was allergic to the twentieth century.” – Former England scrum-half Nigel Melville who spent most of the 1980s injured.

“We’re going to tear those boys apart.” – Message pinned up on the changing room wall by England skipper Will Carling before his team ran out to face the All Blacks in the 1995 World Cup semi-final in Cape Town. It took at least 70 seconds for New Zealand to score their first try as they demolished England 45-29.

“Don’t ask me about emotions in the Welsh dressing room. I’m someone who cries when he watches ‘Little House on the Prairie’” – Former Welsh second row Bob Norster remembers that special Dragons atmosphere.

“There’s no doubt about it, he’s a big Bar Steward” – Gavin Hastings, master of the bleedin’ obvious, on Jonah Lomu.

“The relationship between the Welsh and the English is based on trust and understanding. They don’t trust us and we don’t understand them.” – Former RFU supremo Dudley Wood on Anglo-Welsh relations.

“If you can’t take a punch, you should play table tennis.” – Former French skipper and coach Pierre Berbizier illustrates his nation’s attitude to on-pitch violence.

“A player of ours has been proven guilty of biting. That’s a scar that will never heal.” – Bath coach Andy Robinson after his prop Kevin Yates was suspended for taking a chunk out of an opposing flanker’s ear.

“Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman’s game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts.” – Henry Blaha

“Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the centre of the city.” – Oscar Wilde

“In our country, true teams rarely exist . . . social barriers and personal ambitions have reduced athletes to dissolute cliques or individuals thrown together for mutual profit . . . Yet these rugby players with their muddied, cracked bodies, are struggling to hold onto a sense of humanity that we in America have lost and are unlikely to regain. The game may only be to move a ball forward on a dirt field, but the task can be accomplished with an unshackled joy and its memories will be a permanent delight. The women and men who play on that rugby field are more alive than too many of us will ever be. The foolish emptiness we think we perceive in their existence is only our own.” – Victor Cahn

“The French are predictably unpredictable.” – Andrew Mehrtens after an All-Blacks surprise loss to the French in the 1999 Rugby World Cup

“For an 18-month suspension, I feel I probably should have torn it off. Then at least I could say, ‘Look, I’ve returned to South Africa with the guy’s ear.’” – Johan le Roux after biting Sean Fitzpatrick’s ear

“I may not have been very tall or very athletic, but the one thing I did have was the most effective backside in world rugby.” – Jim Glennon

“I prefer rugby to soccer. I enjoy the violence in rugby, except when they start biting each other’s ears off.” – Elizabeth Taylor

“If the game is run properly as a professional game, you do not need 57 old farts running rugby.” – Will Carling

“I’m still an amateur, of course, but I became rugby’s first millionaire five years ago.” – David Campese

“As you run around Battersea Park in them, looking like a cross between a member of the SAS and Blake’s Seven, there is always the lingering fear of arrest.” – Brian Moore on England’s new rubber training suit

“Rugby football is a game I can’t claim absolutely to understand in all its niceties, if you know what I mean. I can follow the broad, general principles, of course. I mean to say, I know that the main scheme is to work the ball down the field somehow and deposit it over the line at the other end and that, in order to squalch this programme, each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.” – P. G. Wodehouse Very Good, Jeeves (1930)

“The only trophy we won this day, was the blood and sweat we left on the pitch…. and it was enough” – Anon

On his son Huw’s choice to play for England: “I knew he would never play for Wales … he’s tone deaf.” – Vernon Davies

After England had been humbled by New Zealand in the World Cup semi-final: “I don’t know about us not having a Plan B when things went wrong, we looked like we didn’t have a Plan A.” – Geoff Cooke

“Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist, and preferably play in the pack.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, talking about rugby

“A major rugby tour by the British Isles to New Zealand is a cross between a medieval crusade and a prep school outing.” – John Hopkins

“England’s coach Jack Powell, an immensely successful businessman, has the acerbic wit of Dorothy Parker and, according to most New Zealanders, a similar knowledge of rugby.” – Mark Reason

“Most Misleading Campaign of 1991: England’s rugby World Cup squad, who promoted a scheme called ‘Run with the Ball’. Not, unfortunately, among themselves.” – Time Out

On England’s new look against Australia: “This looks a good team on paper, let’s see how it looks on grass.” – Nigel Mellville

On playing for Wales at Lansdowne Road, Dublin: “I didn’t know what was going on at the start in the swirling wind. The flags were all pointing in different directions and I thought the Irish had starched them just to fool us.” – Mike Watkins

On Wales losing 28-9 against Australia: “No leadership, no ideas. Not even enough imagination to thump someone in the line-out when the ref wasn’t looking.” – J.P.R. Williams

Pre-game pep talk before facing England: “Look what these bar stewards have done to Wales. They’ve taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our houses and they only live in them for a fortnight every 12 months. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We’ve been exploited, r***, controlled and punished by the English – and that’s who you are playing this afternoon.” – Phil Bennett

“Rugby is not like tea, which is good only in England, with English water and English milk. On the contrary, rugby would be better, frankly, if it were made in a Twickenham pot and warmed up in a Pyrenean cauldron.” – Dennis La Lanne

“The French selectors never do anything by halves; for the first international of the season against Ireland they dropped half the three-quarter line.” – Nigel Starmer-Smith

“The job of Welsh coach is like a minor part in a Quentin Tarantino film: you stagger on, you hallucinate, nobody seems to understand a word you say, you throw up, you get shot. Poor old Kevin Bowring has come up through the coaching structure so he knows what it takes … 15 more players than Wales have at present.” – Mark Reason

“The only hope for the England rugby union team is to play it all for laughs. It would pack them in if the public address system at Twickenham was turned up full blast to record the laughs at every inept bit of passing, kicking or tackling. The nation would be in fits … and on telly the BBC would not need a commentator but just a tape of that Laughing Policeman, turning it loud at the most hilarious bits.” – Jim Rivers

“Tony Ward is the most important rugby player in Ireland. His legs are far more important to his country than even those of Marlene Dietrich were to the film industry. A little hairier, maybe, but a pair of absolute winners.” – C.M.H. Gibson

“Me? As England’s answer to Jonah Lomu? Joanna Lumley, more likely.” – Damian Hopley

On Jonah Lomu: “I’ve seen a lot people like him, but they weren’t playing on the wing.” – Colin Meads

On Jonah Lomu: “The Brent Spar with attitude. A figure who inspires hero worship among even those who think a fly-half is a glass of beer consumed when ‘er indoors is looking the other way.” – Robert Philip

On Lomu finally turning down offers from League teams: “Jonah Lomu is staying in New Zealand, ending an is-he-or-isn’t-he saga which rivalled the trial of OJ. Simpson for unnecessarily protracted tedium.” – Paul Wilson

Gareth Edwards: “The sooner that little so-and-so goes to rugby league, the better it will be for us.” – Dickie Jeeps

On the biggest change after returning to the Union code: “It’s the first time I’ve been cold for seven years. I was never cold playing rugby league.” – Jonathan Davis

Summing up during the “Dolphin hooks Winkle round man’s leg” indecent sexual act court case: “Men do not greet one another like this … except perhaps at rugby club dinners.” – Alan Cooper, Defence Counsel

“New Zealand rugby is a colourful game since you get all black … and blue.” – Anon

“A forward’s usefulness to his side varies as to the square of his distance from the ball.” – Clarrie Gibbons

“Colin Meads is the kind of player you expect to see emerging from a ruck with the remains of a jockstrap between his teeth.” – Tom O’Reilly

“Forwards are the gnarled and scarred creatures who have a propensity for running into and bleeding all over each other.” – Peter Fitzsimmons

“I don’t know why prop forwards play rugby.” – Lionel Weston

“In 1823, William Webb Ellis first picked up the ball in his arms and ran with it. And for the next 156 years forwards have been trying to work out why.” – Sir Tasker Watkins

On the Munster pack: “Mothers keep their photo on the mantelpiece to stop the kids going too near the fire.” – Jim Noilly

“The Holy Writ of Gloucester Rugby Club demands: first, that the forwards shall win the ball; second, that the forwards shall keep the ball; and third, the backs shall buy the beer.” – Doug Ibbotson

“The one-handed palmer can always reach higher, they say. They may be right, but the result is that nearly every line-out is like a tropical island – all waving palms.” – Vivian Jenkins

“Wade Dooley: With a handle like that he sounds more like a western sheriff than the Lancashire bobby that he is.” – Norman Mair

After JPR Williams was involved in a road traffic accident: “Bloody typical, isn’t it? The car’s a write-off. The tanker’s a write-off. But JPR comes out of it all in one piece.” – Gareth Edwards

“If I had been a winger, I might have been daydreaming and thinking about how to keep my kit clean for next week.” – Bill Beaumont

“Two sausages at tonight’s barbecue!” – Phil Kearns to Kiwi Sean Fitzpatrick after the former scored a try during a Bledisloe Cup match.

“A game played by fewer than fifteen a side, at least half of whom should be totally unfit.” – Michael Green

Martin Offiah: “Your hands can’t catch what your eyes can’t see.” – Nike rugby boot advert

Peter Sterling: “If Walt Disney had seen this little man’s antics, there’d have been no Mickey Mouse.” – Ray French

“Rory Underwood: The gentleman athlete and flightmeister.” – Punch

“Rugby backs can be identified because they generally have clean jerseys and identifiable partings in their hair… come the revolution the backs will be the first to be lined up against the wall and shot for living parasitically off the work of others.” – Peter Fizsimmons

“Rugby players are either piano shifters or piano movers. Fortunately, I am one of those who can play a tune.” – Pierre Danos

Simon Geoghegan: “The winger resembles Mother Brown, running with a high knee-lift and sometimes not progressing far from the spot where he started.” – Mark Reason

On playing his last game of rugby for Bath: “I thought I would have a quiet pint … and about 17 noisy ones.” – Gareth Chilcott

“Playing rugby at school I once fell on a loose ball and, through ignorance and fear, held on despite a fierce pummelling. After that it took me months to convince my team-mates I was a coward.” – Peter Cook

“Ray Gravell Eats Soft Centres.” – Banner at Cardiff Arms Park (1970s)

“Rugby is a game for the mentally deficient… That is why it was invented by the British. Who else but an Englishman could invent an oval ball?” – Peter Pook

“Rugby is played by men with odd shaped balls.” – Car bumper sticker

“The first half is invariably much longer than the second. This is partly because of the late kick-off but is also caused by the unfitness of the referee.” – Michael Green

To Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips, Gordonstoun School’s rugby captain, for his pre-match coin-toss preference: “Grandmother or tails, sir?” – Anon rugby referee

“The women sit, getting colder and colder, on a seat getting harder and harder, watching oafs, getting muddier and muddier.” – Virginia Graham

“Rugby may have many problems, but the gravest is undoubtedly that of the persistence of summer.” – Chris Laidlaw

“The whole point of rugby is that it is, first and foremost, a state of mind, a spirit.” – Jean-Pierre Rives

“Beer and Rugby are more or less synonymous.” – Chris Laidlaw

“The pub is as much a part of rugby as is the playing field.” – John Dickenson

“Subdue and penetrate.” – The motto of the All-Blacks

“You can go to the end of time, the last World Cup in the history of mankind, and the All-Blacks will be favourites for it.” – Phil Kearns

“I wanted a play that would paint the full face of sensuality, rebellion and revivalism. In South Wales these three phenomena have played second fiddle only to the Rugby Union which is a distillation of all three.” – Gwyn Thomas

“The tactical difference between Association Football and Rugby with its varieties seems to be that in the former, the ball is the missile, in the latter, men are the missles.” – Alfred E. Crawley

Bill McLaren on Vleis Visagie: “Big Vleis Visagie – born when meat was cheap!”

“Beer was invented to stop props from taking over the world” – Anon

Bathman_in_London wrote:That is a classic one, really wound McGrath up too.

McGrath to Ramnaresh Sarwan: “So what does Brian Lara’s di*k taste like?” Sarwan: “I don’t know. Ask your wife.”
McGrath (lost his cool): “If you ever F**king mention my wife again, I’ll F**king rip your F**ing throat out.”