Cards

A card or a wag or eccentric, what I would call "a character" - that's the sort of sportsman a writer in the Times says he likes to see. He's not much interested in golf as a game to watch but he would watch if John Daly was playing. Before the games Daly would down the pints and the whisky chasers and smoke heaps of fags..... Like the darts player, Jocky Wilson, who'd down the pints then the vodka (a whole bottle of it with a trace of coca cola to hide its lack of colour) and play a game.....
When I played rugby many moons ago for second and third rate teams there was always the bloke who turned up, fag in hand, looking as if he had just got out of bed after a heavy night's drinking: eyes half closed, belches coming from his pot belly, and an F on his lips ready for a four letter word if required. We used to have to wash our own kit and pay to play - no idea why. There were no showers. Just a field. Maybe sometimes you'd have to put the posts up before you could start the game. Iron posts on one occasion. Sometimes a referee would attend. Why they came I don't know because inevitably they'd be insulted throughout the game. No one ever got sent off - they wouldn't have dared with often a fast flowing river nearby!
There were many "cards" in the games I played in: one, the full-back, hadn't told his wife he played so he had to get someone to wash his kit. Probably his mother! Another was so unfit he couldn't get to the place where the scrum was being set and just stood and watched. I saw him at the end of a game breathing heavily but managing to smoke a fag at the same time.
Tony Ward was a card I believe. I was in a pub near the Cardiff Arms Park after an Irish/Wales international when in comes Tony Ward all dressed up in an evening suit with bow tie to match. He had come to meet up with his Irish pals who were there at the far end of the room. He had a few drinks with them and a laugh (Ireland had won). I mentioned this to a friend of mine who was well up on the ettiquette of after match behaviour who said "He shouldn't have been there. Very bad form. They won't like it, the Irish powers-that-be."
He was dropped for the next game. I never knew if the incident had anything to do with it. Fancy doing that to Ireland's great outside half. Except that they chose Ollie Campbell instead!