I’d played rugby since going to the grammar school at the age of eleven.  I had a good kick on me, could catch, pass, tackle and was fairly nimble.  A diet of school dumplings and sinker sponge though soon saw me piling on weight; and my position in the school team reflected this.

I started at fullback, racing in defence to cover the opposition’s breaks or to join our own back line in attack.  When I couldn’t do this any longer, carrying the equivalent of a sackful of spuds, I was moved to the scrum’s back row; then to second row and finally I scraped into the team as tight-head prop.

Rugby’s beauty, though, was that its myriad component skills, running, tackling, kicking, jumping accommodate all shapes and sizes from whippets on the wing, midget scrum halves, beanpole locks and, fortunately for me, fatboys as props.  Their particular skill was to be able to shove, or in my case, to lean.

For those who don’t know rugby, props are the short, fat, ugly ones with cauliflower ears whose knuckles scrape low to the ground and whose IQ is lower still.  They are bullish not from courage but because (as the saying goes) where there’s no sense there’s no feeling.  Their only terror is finding the ball in their hands.

This doesn’t happen often since any team-mate knows how pointless it is to pass the ball to a prop.  He’ll either drop it, or………..no!  he’ll drop it.  I have seen the rule broken occasionally though when a ball has stuck in his hands, which is when panic sets in.  What you did then was to kick it; anywhere would do, preferably forwards, but anywhere would do.  And then grin sheepishly at the half dozen team-mates chorusing “Twat!”

It follows from this that props never scored.  They never scored because they never had the ball.  We left that job to the girls in the backs.  On the one occasion my dad came to watch me play he said after the game, “I didn’t see you with the ball?”.  I explained that I hadn’t touched it yet that season.

No, as a prop you leant on your opposing prop then trundled to the next breakdown in play – a lineout or another scrum, then trundled…..You get the idea.

Which is why from a distance now of almost 40 years I can still recollect vividly the only try I ever scored in 13 years of playing

I was at Durham University at an away match near Newcastle.  They were abysmal and we’d 50 points on the board by midway through the second half….. when it happened.

Some poncey halfback of ours had taken play almost to their posts.  He managed to offload to the scrumhalf backing up who fed out right.  Another pair of hands, then another, spin passes arrowing inexorably towards me. “Fuck me!” I thought “It’s coming!”.   It came to Mike Somebody-or-Other inside me, a greedy fat bastard who fancied himself.  But their cover was too fast for him.  Shit!  He was going to pass to me!

And then it came; not the spinning bullet in flight it had been up to then but the scruffiest, grubbiest little lob a six-year old girl could have done.  It was falling a couple of yards in front of me, but I stooped like a falcon to get one hand under it, inches from the ground, scoop it up to my chest and dive over the line.

I have seen on telly similar pick-ups by gifted fly-halves like Jonny Wilkinson and Dan Carter and listened to Brian Moore eulogising “How skilful was that?”.  Well, Mooro, you weren’t there to see this fatboy do it in 1975.

These days I couldn’t bend down from standing to tie my shoelaces let alone running.  Perhaps I should take up yoga or something.  It’s worth a try.