Pretty much says it all.

"There's a moment:

The moment you step onto the pitch.

Bills, relationships, work, all the day's troubles just fade away.

The cool air stretches my lungs.

The smell of wet grass fills my nostrils.

My senses are heightened.

There is no place I'd rather be.

No place I feel more alive.

The itch is my home. My team. My family.

My team is more than just a group of individuals.

It's an organism.

A living, breathing entity that can delive a symphony of beauty, athleticism and violence.

When we are together, we are amazing.

We desire victory.

We yearn for it.

We fight for it.

Yet, as much as we desire the domination of our opponents, the sweetest moments arrive when we stand opposite our equals.

They give us nothing.

Every scrum is a war.

The backs are covered with a blanket of humanity.

We give them nothing.

Every hit is an opportunity to deliver punishment, an opportunity to weaken the body that stands against us.

They give as good as they get.

Eighty minutes seems like a lifetime.

There are many times when I am exhausted, where we are exhausted.

Victory is sweet, but short lived.

We've been on the other side.

We hug our opponents, those who have battered us for 80 minutes, punished us for 80 minutes, tested everything we had inside us.

We celebrate them, not our victory.

For without them, this glorious moment, this chance to test our worth, would not exist.
If you aren't a rugger it's hard to understand push through the sweat and the blood and the pain and we grow stronger.

Hard to understand what it'slike to walk into work with a black eye and bruises covering my legs and arms.

Hard to understand why I keep playing, through the tears, breaks, and surgeries.

I don't get paid.

I may never see a test match.

There are no fans screaming my name.

but the magic of this game, this game that I love so much, is that I don't need any of that.

Because rugby is a sport.

Rugby is brutal.

Right when you think you have it all figured out it knocks you down again and again.

But you fight and after a while you realize something that most people never will.

No matter how hard you hit me, no matter how many times you knock me down, I'm going to get up.

Just one more time.

I will never quit.

There are two choices in life: live quiet, safe and timid and go quietly inot that great beyond.

Or challenge yourself at every turn, tasting fear, pain, setbacks, sweet victory, as well as bitter defeat.

 

My choice is simple.

I AM A RUGGER."

quote credit: makemescrum.tumblr.com