Playing Badly To Escape The Hell Hole

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I did you all a favor by posting this photograph as now you have seen it you don't need to visit this hell hole of a town.

When I was doing my National Service in the Army I played quite a bit of sport as this got you out of doing quite a bit of the dog work. My base for basic training was in Kimberley, known for it's big hole when they had a diamond rush. Other than that don't kid yourself there is nothing else to see. The place is a giant dust bowl and if the world had an arse end this would be it. I looked up the 10 best things to do in Kimberley and there is only one I would be tempted in. That is seeing the 1000's of Flamingos at Kampfers Dam, but then again I am never returning so it is not happening.

The base where I was doing my training for the first 6 months was having a sports day. I knew what it was about as they were look for any potential players to join their various sports teams. If you showed any skill you were trapped and they would not allow you to transfer out to another base. This was a training base and believe me you don't want to be part of that for 2 years. Finding a cushy post on this base would be overly difficult and only jogging was allowed with no walking permitted. The rules had their own set of rules and then there were more rules as they loved to punish people.

I was involved in a game of rugby on that day and it was probably the hardest game I had to play. You had to be thinking of not trying to catch the ball and just doing the opposite of what you would normally do. I the scrums you wouldn't lock your legs and just lean with no pushing so you looked worse than useless. I remember a guy running towards me with the ball and on purpose I fell for his dummy move. They were all laughing thinking they were so brilliant as everything they did worked. Everything we did worked as not one of us was invited to stay on so we were all happy.

When I reached my new base I had no issues saying I would play for the regiments rugby team when required. This was a Special Force base so the guys were a lot older and had all the tricks you can imagine. It was like a team made up of 40 year olds who were super fit and a couple of wide eyed youngsters who were along for the ride. Most of these guys had done some type of mercenary work at some point so they were not the kind to mess about with.

We were playing a "friendly" against a premier club side as part of their pre season training. There must have been a few thousand supporters watching cheering on from the side lines. What I witnessed over the next 80 minutes was educational to say the least. There were hand offs that looked like punches and they were really punches. The other side was complaining as they were being beaten not only on the scoreboard, but literally.

This was the dirtiest game I have ever been involved in and it got really heated at times. Our opponents that day were literally scared of what was happening and if truth be told that is what beat them. A team can out muscle you, but you can still beat them by just being smarter. The referee was helping out and was someone from our base and even still the other outfit should have won comfortably. It turned out that they have this match every year to welcome in the new season for the rugby club in the area. Some of the regiments team were members of this club and were just having a little fun.

I played a few other games for the regiment when I had no other sporting commitments on. These were proper games though with no cheating and violence. We beat the Navy and the Air Force and a first win over an established club in the league. At this point we had changed up the older guys for younger members as it wasn't a good sight running onto a field with half your team limping from old war wounds and god knows what.