Forty years ago, when I was 48 and wondering if I'd ever reach 50, another young fellow named Bob Hutchison was writing letters to a bunch of old rugby teammates asking if they would like to tie on their boots for a fun game. It was in the spring of 1972, and a team of rugby-playing Japanese was looking for an old-timers game in Victoria.
The recipients of the Hutchison invitations were mostly ex-Crimson Tide players, the Vancouver Island all-star team for which Hutchison had played in his athletic heyday. With the assurance that the Wak Wak players from Osaka would all be over 40 years of age, the ex-Crimson Tide players - and other recruited "friends" - signed up, appropriately called themselves the Ebb Tide and soon reported a 30-player "availability" list.
They played their first game against the Wak Wak on Oct. 2, 1972 - and so much enjoyed the discovery that they could still kick, catch and run a rugby ball they decided to officially organize. Harry Turner became first president; John Skillings, vice-president; Ross Irving, secretary-treasurer; and Frank Gower, director at large. Coaches for their early games were David McKenzie and Peter Clarke - but with only one other "senior" team in B.C., where could the Ebb Tide find steady and fun competition after Wak Wak left?
The solution proved simple. On Vancouver Island, most local clubs ran Third Division teams composed of players too long in the tooth to compete at elite or second-division levels, and younger players not yet skilled enough. Ebb Tide elected to join the third-division teams for competitive play. As the years passed other over-40 clubs sprang up. Today in B.C., there is a formal Northwest Over-40s Rugby League and Ebb Tide boasts the record for most years in continuous operation in the West.
In 1974, Ebb Tide sought a rematch with Wak Wak RFC in Osaka, and thus began a foreign-country touring history in which Ebb Tide teams excelled as ambassadors for goodwill and sportsmanship in a multitude of countries.
In 2011, they sent a team to New Zealand to play prelude exhibition games to the World Cup. In Auckland, the team was accorded the high honour of a ceremonial Maori welcome organized by Alec Hawke, who had played for Ebb Tide during a spell when he worked in Victoria. The New Zealand Maori caught up with Ebb Tide in France earlier this year and "laced up for a couple of games."
Back home for the summer, the team will be practising at Windsor Park on Thursday evenings, getting ready for a fall season that promises to be busier than usual, with special 40th-anniversary programs scheduled for October.
But the organizers have a problem. They have 326 names of Ebb Tide players in their membership, past and present, data base.
Some names are now memorials for teammates who have crossed the final Try line. Most names on the roster (Google will find it at Ebb Tide RFC,BC CA) are of players who remain as active or social members - but more than a handful have gone astray over the decades since Ebb Tide went formal in 1972-73. Event organizers would like to find them.
So, if you ever played for Ebb Tide, had a father, brother, uncle or aging (by now) boyfriend who wore the club jersey and ran and enjoyed game life with the old guys, give Dave Knox a call at 250-888-8735 or email him at [email protected] for an update on what promises to be a great 40th-birthday celebration.
And if they can still find their old boots, they can still practise - and play. When the Wak Wak played here in 1972, they had an 80-year-old winger who did a 10-to 15-minute stint - and ran like the wind. Ebb Tide has at least one player, Bryan Holmes, entitled to wear purple shorts, the badge of honour accorded all octogenarians still playing. He hopes to be fully recovered from a recently broken arm "to have a bit of a run" in October and be extended the gentle or no tackle courtesies the purple brings.
If organizers need a theme for the event, they could borrow from Hollywood. Call it Legends of the Fall - a movie that has nothing to do with rugby, but provides the perfect title for what Ebb Tide will be offering come October.
Jim Hume writes a weekly column for the Victoria Times Colonist.
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Hume+column+Rugby+veterans+ready+pull+boots+again/6971806/story.html#ixzz2294nuzzA
