My life as a hooker: when a middle-aged bloke discovered rugby

Description

Little Legs -- Training: Not for the Faint-hearted -- Crunch! Learning the Game by Trial but Mostly Error -- Two Steps Forward, Thirteen Pints Back -- Collateral Damage and a Cunning Plan -- Friends, Romans, Commuters! Lend Me Your Cauliflower Ears -- Struggling in Streatham -- Igor the Terrible -- Never Work with Children (or Committees) -- International Duty -- Captain's Poker -- Cuddles, Ramadan and Hamish -- A Drinking Club with a Rugby Problem -- The 4th-XV Easter Tour -- To Hellingly and Back -- Mind Over Matter: If I Didn't Mind, the Results Didn't Matter -- The Skivington Waltz -- What's in a Nickname? -- No Sport for Old Men -- Going the Extra Yard -- Look Back in Bognor -- The Art of Not Tackling -- Champions? -- A Final Thought.;In my late thirties, it gradually dawned on me that I had become Jason's regular hooker. It was an arrangement that worked well for a couple of reasons. He didn't need me to dress up in anything particularly risqué or to do anything too vulgar, other than cuddle in the middle of a field with him and fourteen other men on a Saturday afternoon.'Steven Gauge's response to an impending midlife crisis didn't involve piercings, tattoos or leather trousers - instead, he decided to take up rugby, and made a number of important discoveries. First, that in this ultimate contact sport, class divisions me. Little Legs -- Training: Not for the Faint-hearted -- Crunch! Learning the Game by Trial but Mostly Error -- Two Steps Forward, Thirteen Pints Back -- Collateral Damage and a Cunning Plan -- Friends, Romans, Commuters! Lend Me Your Cauliflower Ears -- Struggling in Streatham -- Igor the Terrible -- Never Work with Children (or Committees) -- International Duty -- Captain's Poker -- Cuddles, Ramadan and Hamish -- A Drinking Club with a Rugby Problem -- The 4th-XV Easter Tour -- To Hellingly and Back -- Mind Over Matter: If I Didn't Mind, the Results Didn't Matter -- The Skivington Waltz -- What's in a Nickname? -- No Sport for Old Men -- Going the Extra Yard -- Look Back in Bognor -- The Art of Not Tackling -- Champions? -- A Final Thought.