Rugby

A long time ago I wrote a play called "Horseplay"; it won the Drama association of Wales play competition in 1980 but it was never performed. One of reasons given was that it had too many in the cast: "we'd have to pay everyone the basic pay even if they had a line or two...." etc. "Too Welshy" said a Bristol producer. So it laid in my drawer for many years until recently, when I re-wrote it with a cast not of 20 or so (mostly rugby players and camp followers) but with a cast of 4. And it was "published" on-line. And it was performed for the first time this month in Canada - I didn't pop across to see it.
The action of the play takes place in a rugby club where, on a night of celebration after winning a local derby game, a young woman from the rival club is assaulted and, so she says, gang-raped. Instantly the club's officials take action to protect the players, accuse the girl (who was a well known "skirt") of making up the story; in the coarse of the play the club secretary gets to believe the girl and urges her to take the rapists to court.
I couldn't help thinking of Tyndall and his problems down under (NZ that is not where you thought!). He has come in for a lot of stick over the incident when he appeared to be propositioning a young lady while seeming to be quite pissed. Fined £25000. Dropped from the team. I would have thought he would have suffered enough at the hands of the royal family but this on top seems to me bit extreme.
I thought the same when Andy Powell drove a golf cart up a motorway to get himself a packet of crisps or something. He was dropped from the Welsh team.
The thing is probably I lived my young life in a different age when there was a good deal more wry humour gained from the cavorting of rugby players. Of course there were no mobile phones then to capture for Youtube the goings-on of well known people caught, so to speak, with their pants down. But there wasn't the same interest in it all. It went on, as it were, behind closed doors. I found Andy Powell's antics highly amusing and, to a lesser extent, Tyndall's too. Some of the things that went on in my day.....
So my play is being done in Canada. This play has a gang rape in it, incidental music from Tom Jones singing "Delilah" with Welsh hymns too and it's being performed by schoolchildren in Quebec which is part of French-speaking Canada! I don't believe it. Or, as The Daily Mail often puts it: "you couldn't make it up."