Brendan Gallagher: Why Barbados against mighty All Blacks will be no rum do
For even the most fanatical ‘rugbyhead’, still sore from a game the previous afternoon and a pre-dawn alarm call, rugby hell beckons but the cheery if bedraggled crew sheltering in the car park laugh it off.
They are on a mission. In 139 days’ time they will face New Zealand, the greatest, most formidable Sevens side the world has seen, in front of a near sell-out 50,000 Ibrox crowd at the Commonwealth Games tournament. Tiny Barbados are going to tackle the All Blacks and by way of a warm-up they have also scrounged an invite to the HSBC Hong Kong Sevens on March 28. Bloody Hell! David and Goliath does not even come close.
The Bajans could, with honour, have ducked the challenge after finishing fourth in the Americas Championship recently and failing by one place to qualify automatically for the Commonwealth Games but then Nigeria, who had qualified and gone into the draw, decided that all things considered they perhaps might pass on this occasion. Hurried emails were exchanged between Glasgow and Bridgetown but within a matter of minutes Barbados had answered in the affirmative. Why ever not? As the Bajan proverb tells us: “It don’t take a big axe tuh cut down a big tree.” Mind you there is another saying which warns against aiming for the impossible: “Don’t heng yuh hat wih yuh hand can’ reach!”
Barbados rugby prefer to accentuate the positive and with time short the British based Bajans, who play occasional tournaments under the “Flying Fish” banner, have been cracking on. Shaun English, a sturdy lock with an obligatory black eye from a recent skirmish, rose in the middle of the night to drive down from Blaydon way up in Northumbria to attend, while Adam Ming and Liam Cooper-King have trekked up from the Valleys where they play their rugby for Gilfach Goch and Mountain Ash respectively.
Others arrive hotfoot from Sutton Coldfield, Market Harborough, Chichester, Canterbury, Chiswick, Weston Super Mare and all points West.
And not a penny of expenses claimed or expected. To a man they have all paid for the pleasure of what turned out to be an intensive six-hour boot camp. A packet of lunchtime sandwiches – or cutters as most Bajans prefer to call them – from over the A325 at Tescos offered the only relief and for many a long day ended with agonising cramp during the endless drive home.
Barbados might not ever win a whole load of rugby matches – XVs or Sevens – but they are reassuring proof that the spirit of rugby is alive and well and remains something pretty special. These guys might be playing for a little island in the Caribbean but in a very significant way they also represent the weekend warriors here in Britain, their adopted home.
Every junior club player, at some stage, has a “what-if” moment when they daydream of another rugby existence altogether. What if I got sensationally fit, dedicated myself to the game for a year, lived like a professional athlete, lay off the Banks Beer and Mount Gay rum, started eating properly and learned to pass off my left hand. How far could I really go?
Well that’s the dream the Bajans are currently living out. The late Commonwealth Games call-up was a tad unexpected but 18 months ago they did draw up a programme designed to give them just a sniff of reaching the Olympic tournament in Rio 2016, which is not quite as bonkers as it might sound.
Obviously they will have no chance whatsoever of qualifying via the IRB Series which will contribute four of the 12 teams but in theory if they could win the Americas qualifying tournament next year – in effect beat Canada and USA and possibly Argentina if the Pumas don’t qualify via the IRB Series – it could happen. OK, that’s probably a 100-1 shot at best but just occasionally rank outsiders have their day.
In the meantime back to the training and “living the dream.” Leon Driscoll, a formidably fit looking crew-cutted gym manager and instructor from Chichester, and lawyer Marcus Harewood, a flanker with Sutton Coldfield, worked the lads like dogs. Every minute needs to count but at least they dispensed with the truly horrible bit first.
Try this little brute next time you are feeling brave or foolish: Three cones in a straight line 15 metres apart. Start at cone one with a press up, sprint to cone two and do a forward role, score a mock try at cone three then roll over and head back from whence you came repeating the routine. That cycle counts as two laps. Do this for one minute, rest for one minute and then go again. And again, and again. In fact go seven times in total.
Over 4,000 miles away another group of Bajans have been doing exactly the same at another Garrison – the Garrison Savannah at Bridgetown where their pitch and training ground is situated inside the racecourse which staged the famous Gold Cup yesterday.
Performances on both sides of the world are recorded and transmitted around the squad by way of sharing the mutual suffering and breeding a healthy internal competition. For the record 8.5 was the top score in a single minute in the clawing mud of Aldershot while one hero, Guildford flanker Phil Lucas who captains the Sevens team, was still knocking out a 7.5 in the last of his seven minutes.
A gruesome exercise in fighting lactic acid which reminded me of a session I once watched Sir Chris Hoy do. One minute full gas sprint on the static bike, one minute rest. Then go again another six times. For some reason seven minutes is the magic number for these bouts of sadism. By the end of his final effort Hoy was beginning to pass out and GB coaches had to help him off the bike where he collapsed onto a crash mat and lay in the foetal position for three or four minutes as the lactic acid flooded his body and everything went into spasm.
Here at Aldershot the guys just collapsed in the mud as if taken out by a sniper and some could still barely speak ten minutes later. To the smell of dog excrement, human vomit was now added.
“Sevens is all about getting up and down time and time again, one minute efforts, fighting the lactic and shuttle exercises like those are essential,” says Driscoll, who has set up personal fitness plans for all the squad, keeping in daily touch via email or Skype.
“We will have absolutely no chance of doing ourselves justice unless we can reach an exceptional level of fitness, we must have that platform if we are to compete against the full-time professional athletes we’ll be up against.”
Driscoll is a breezy confident character and after watching him train for the best part of the day clearly capable of playing at a high level had that been his wish. While lining up against New Zealand in a fully competitive Commonwealth Games Sevens match would frighten the bejasus out of most amateur club players he sees only the positives.
“New Zealand? I don’t think there is anything to be ‘scared’ of is there? They are the best Sevens team in the world from the best rugby nation on the planet. At the Wellington tournament recently they conceded just 13 points in seven games. They beat England 31-0 and they nilled South Africa in the final so we have got nothing to lose. They’ve humbled much better teams than Barbados!
“No, this is just a great opportunity to play in front of millions on TV and a packed Ibrox. We’ll be living the dream with our friends and family up in the stands. That’s pure enjoyment, there is no pressure there. How many players like us will ever be able to say we played against New Zealand in a competitive game?”
Driscoll is certainly a key player for Barbados and there are others with a fair bit of experience who might yet come into play and bolster the squad. Former Coventry and England A wing Kurt Johnson is battling to overcome a bad hamstring injury for the summer while former London Broncos RL back Dom Peters has also come out of retirement and has been playing for the team although also currently injured.
Exciting League prospect Jamahl Hunte was a standout for Barbados at a recent tournament in the Cayman Islands although, alas, another League man Kyle Eastmond has decided to try his luck with England! Eastmond does keep in regular touch, though, and supports the project.
Young Alex Griffiths from the Hornets club in Weston is a Welsh Exiles and Welsh Students centre and has just joined the squad, Jordan Gomez plays in the back three for Reading, Michael Phillips from Canterbury has serious wheels and the heavily dreadlocked Leon Donnelly from Market Harborough has proved a real find.
Down in Barbados the pick is probably car mechanic Sean Ward, who is vice-captain of the national team and captain of the CouCous – the Barbados-based team that plays the Caribbean Sevens circuit. Jae Brown is a labourer and noted Street dancer in Bridgetown and brings high wattage energy to proceedings and Dwight Forde is another very physical player.
That trio along with others – Kevyn Murrell, Dario Stoute, Neil Forde, Nick Jackman and Bryan Cummings – will be linking up with British-based Bajans in Loughborough next weekend when Sutton Coldfield RFC and the Crossfit 76 Gym are hosting the squad before a four-day camp in Guildford ahead of the Hong Kong Sevens.
The mind boggles at the time off work these guys are having to negotiate and the personal expense but for them it is worth it.
“Do you know something, and no disrespect to New Zealand, but we don’t train like this and drag ourselves out of bed early on Sunday mornings just to play against them,” continues Driscoll. “We are here for something bigger than that even. We have all re-organised our lives to a fair degree to try to make this happen because we just enjoy the challenge and almost the madness of it all.
“We want to do something for Barbados and the friendship and camaraderie that has come out of this already is incredible.
“When I get up every morning, and I’m the lucky one because the gym is my office, I know that somewhere in the country one of my buddies is also squeezing in an extra session before work, and that’s the same for guys down on the island as well. We are all brothers, family and we are having a good time. This thing will go as far as we want it to go.”
Anybody wishing to either put themselves forward for the Barbados Sevens squad or just to support the project in other ways should contact Jason Brewer at jbrewer.ipl@gmail.com
