I was never one to try hurt anybody (never even rucked a player in 11 years of playing rugby) or chirp the ref but my determination and fearlessness did hurt some people, all by mistake! Promise!
1) Just arrived at my new high school, had rugby practice 2-3 times before our first game, the coaches were impressed by my skills but thought I was too small for a flank. Anyway I make it onto the bench and get on the field roughly 8-10 minutes into the 2nd half. Now this business of coming off the bench was new to me, in my previous schools I was always in the 1st team and half of the time I was captain as well, so I came out with a mission for this game.
Our opposition had this very large lock (biggest guy on the field) which they were using for crash balls and tap penalties. So during this game my team was constantly offside and infringing in the rucks so this guy was getting a lot of ball and was breaking our defense whenever he got a run since our forwards were getting scared of this guy now. Anyway we got penalized again and they took another tap penalty, again giving it to this guy. Now my best attribute was my tackling so when I saw they were gonna give to bigfoot, I lined him up. As soon as that scrumhalf tapped the ball and popped it up to him, I dashed straight at him and dived for his shins. We met about half (we were 10 metres back) and I caught him in the perfect place to completely knock him off his feet with his head coming down first on the other end. I didn't see the aftermath but my team told me his face literally bounced off the grass, and he knocked the ball on. It was the end of the game for him and he had to get stretchered off the field.
You'd of sweared I scored a try the way my team and coach went on, I was still a bit dazed on the ground when my teammates ripped me off the floor with plenty of back pats and taunts to the opposition
Needless to say I was never selected for the bench in that school again.
2) When I was about 14 years old my school team was the best in the Zululand region so we got a lot of touring sides playing us from other regions. This particular game we got a team from a big school in Jo'burg. So we loss the coin toss and had to take the kick-off.
Our flyhalf bounces the ball a few times and preps our forwards that his about to kick. The ball ends up going to the opposition scrumhalf, he immediately whizzes the ball away to his inside centre (12) and this guy's just phenomenal. He ran through our entire team to score under the posts. First movement of the game and we 7-0 down!
OK so we kick-off again, feeling a bit startled making sure it lands by the forwards this time. 8th-man gets it, runs it up, gets tackled, ruck forms, scrum-half whisks it to the flyhalf, flyhalf immediately pops it up for the inside-centre, he AGAIN goes on this crazy run but eventually gets tackled around our 22m, so this guys' made like 50 metres in one run. Anyway I'm one of the first on the scene, contest the ruck, kinda fall off the side so I got run around and join the ruck from the back again. As I'm running around, turning to assume my position from the back of the ruck, I accidently step on the inside-centres face which was poking out from the side! I didn't just step on it, since I was turning, I slipped on it :lol: . At first I didn't know what I stepped on, when I looked back and saw this guys gripping his face with pain I got away from the scene of the crime very quickly
. Luckily he didn't get seriously injured and nobody saw me do it but he never played any part of the game after that. We won that game in the end BTW
3) Another accident injury I caused was on one of my team mates during practice. We were practicing kick-offs (A team vs B team) and the B team guys were doing everything very halfheartedly. We assume position to chase another kick-off when my coach whispers to me "Go hard at them". I nod. Our flyhalf floats a nice weighed ball to the B team's flyhalf, with me charging full steam at this guy. As soon as that guy caught the ball, before he even got to look at where I was, I absolutely mauled him. Got him straight in the abdomen. He goes down, we help him get his wind back and he goes to sit on the sideline. We carry-on with practice, while he's recovering on the sideline but he's looking increasingly uncomfortable. He eventually can't stand-up properly and one of the coaches takes him to the school to get some treatment.
Towards the end of the practice we hear that he's been taken to hospital! Turns out I tore his spleen with that tackle and he had to go for emergency surgery that night. He did eventually recover, although he missed 3 months of school and could never play rugby again. After all that he came up to me and thanked me because he missed the mid year exams because of this :blink:
