2007-03-21 23:24:15

SuperDave comments...

I found myself in the very unusual position of standing in a packed Albany alone (I couldn't access my contingent due to the aforementioned packedness), clutching a pint, watching the rugby. I'm from Liverpool. Where were you? Hope the cold's better. I enjoyed it all apart from the 'stick your funking chariot up your arris' singalong at which point I became slightly nationalistic and hoped we'd win. Anyway, jolly well done your chaps! SuperDave comment

Hey, Super - you were up late. Bet you were tired today, mind. Your comment was answered in such length by me I thought it better to make a whole entry* of it. See below:

wilbach says - I remember going on the pop with the CHSOB 3rds after a cup game in Whitchurch. We had been 'asked to move on' from two pubs for 'being a bit of a rowdy bunch of cheps' and so, quiet as church rhinos, we ordered 18 pints with tequila chasers from the landlord of the last pub in the area. We then started singing the same little ditty that you heard in The Albany. There was a sharp intake of breath from the elderly clientele and Graham the captain looked aghast as he knew we were very soon going to be slinging our collective hooks down the chuffing high street. He needn’t have worried; showing a tremendous amount of vocal control and led by a big second row (who’s name very frustratingly escapes me for the present) we omitted every single profanity from the song replacing it with tight-lipped quiet. Only once was the word ‘arse’ shouted into the silence. And the elderly and very respectable-looking gent sat with his wife eating steak and chips who bellowed it got a devastatingly withering look from his misses, I can tell you. The landlord was so impressed with our control and tunefulness he immediately set up another line of Cuervos. I was incapable of speech by the end of the evening and shared a taxi with our other 2nd row. I didn’t see him again until I met him chatting to my mate Mogg in a tapas bar on Westgate Street years later. Nice bloke – hey, Mr Mogg, what is his name? and who was the dark, 2nd row who played mostly for the 2’s? Lovely singing voice.

And SuperD, the song is only ever sung as a response. Normally. And, being from The Capitol of North Wales, you won’t understand (or be included in) the antipathy that ‘The English’ in the context of ‘rugger’ can provoke. Rugby types in England have the stereotypical caste of being posh, arrogant, loud feckers. And, as often is the case, stereotypes are, unfortunately, based in truth or experience. Or at least based in perceived truth, perhaps.

Anyway, they’re not your chariots so don’t get too upset.

I was poorly sick with cough-cough so watched the game at home alternately screaming and doing Crimean consumption ward patient impressions. It was one hell of a game, mind. Holy Moley, it was.

*'whole entry' has a nasty ring to it...