When the bow and arrow was a secret weapon I used to play rugby – union, that is, not rugby league.  I was never daft enough to play rugby league.  For the less well informed of you, besides technical differences between the two, at the amateur level rugby union is a hard game whilst rugby league is plain dirty.

Not that I wasn’t above a bit of chicanery myself.  It’s important to understand that in those days player safety consisted of “Watch yourself” and “One in, all in”.

I played as a prop forward, the fattest of the fat boys as opposed to the girls in the backs.  Our job was to push ‘n’ shove in scrums and rucks and mauls (it wasn’t important for props to know the difference).  Scrums were joined with a clash of two front rows and turboed in by the other 5 forwards behind them.  These days the ubiquitous “player safety” has proceduralised this into a slow, balletic  “Crouch. Touch. Pause. Engage.”, not dissimilar from what me and Our Gert used to get up to in the bedroom.

And it was in the scrum, especially in the two front rows where 50 stones of our front row collided with 50 stones of theirs that we plied the Dark Arts.

In a mass of 16 heaving bodies no one could see an uppercut being thrown, least of all the ref.  I took a few and threw a few.  But I specialised in an altogether sneakier trick.

Playing as a tight head my bonce was lodged between their hooker’s and their loose head prop’s.  I was adept at slipping my outside shoulder in (known as boreing) which meant that their loose head prop had nothing to push against; and so half the weight of the shove behind him was dissipated outwards.  As a result our scrum could power through theirs.  These days I would have been penalised.  Then most refs hadn't a clue what went on in a scrum and I always got away with it.

A prop forward like me rarely touched the ball – we left that to the fancy dans in the backs.  We measured our effectiveness in the game by different norms.  If one of their backs got tackled and a ruck formed over him the joy of a prop was to give him a good shoeing.  Ostensibly you were trying to heel the ball backwards but a brave (some say stupid) back would ensure they’d fallen in front of the ball allowing his forwards to heel the ball backwards.  “Brave”, because it invited us to heel him backwards.  He might not want the ball so much after a good shoeing.

Line-outs were another area of Machiavellian chaos.  Those were the days before lifting was allowed.  Rather, two lines formed up a yard apart while the ball was thrown in from the touchline to a jumper identified by a code word.  My speciality was to take off for my jump by stepping on the foot of my opposite number so he remained rooted to the ground.

“Dark Arts”, see?