CHRIS HEWETT
GUEST COLUMNIST

Spike Milligan, comedy goldsmith and undisputed grandmaster of nonsense verse, counted rugby among the great loves of his life. “The thing that thrills me most,” he once said, “is the sight of a little bugger leaving a big bugger face down in the mud.” Which was rather poetic, after a fashion.
To the best of our knowledge, Wilfred Owen was a different chap entirely. The literary laureate of the Great War was certainly a different kind of poet. Yet more than once down the years, rugby folk have borrowed his celebrated line about “mystery and mastery” in t...