RUGBY ROUND-UP: The 2024-2025 Surrey Veterans’ competition ended much as the 2023-2024 season did – quietly, in farce, another signal of the grassroots’ game’s sad decline
A 50-season career of playing rugby, old man and boy, has staggered to an unsatisfactory end for Johnny Dobbyn, and through no fault of his own.
Hanging his boots up: Johnny Dobbyn’s final game came a month sooner than he had hoped
Dobbyn, who played his first match as a John Fisher schoolboy in 1975, was hoping to turn out for his last game tomorrow, in the final of the Surrey Vets’ Cup.
But, as last year, the composite veterans’ team made up of players from Purley John Fisher and Chipstead, Fish ’n Chips RFC (geddit?) have advanced all the way to the final without once having to play a match, and yesterday they were advised that they win the cup by default once again, as their hoped-for opposition, Trinity, can’t get a full team together for the auspicious occasion.
And Dobbyn, the occasional rugby correspondent for this website who has dug deep into the difficulties of local grassroots clubs in recruiting and retaining playing members, has a typically forthright message to those he regards as responsible for this disappointing and farcical situation: “Fuck the RFU!”
“That’s all folks – game over! Thanks to opposition Trinity crying off from this Saturday’s Surrey Veterans Cup final, it turns out that my last ever game – and the end of my 50th season – was on March 22.
“My first match was for the John Fisher School in September 1975, playing for both John Fisher and Purley Colts as a teenager and then, as a senior, the John Fisher Old Boys (Purley) – captaining the club in the mid-90s – and Purley John Fisher RFC following the clubs’ merger in 1997.
“More recently, the longevity of my playing was made possible by Fish ’n Chips RFC – a joint venture vets side between PJF and Chipstead – which also provided a bridge into Chipstead’s 2nd XV when PJF’s 2s weren’t playing.
Goodbye to all that: Dobbyn in March, after what he’d hoped would be his penultimate match
“I haven’t played every game of every season, owing to injuries and absences like uni, but I reckon I have played at least one game in every one. I have had a really great time, made lifelong friends and learnt to order a beer in seven European languages thanks to the game.
“I’ll miss the crack in the changing room, the smell of Ralgex and the new super shiny skin-tight shirts. But, to be honest, not modern rugby as it’s played. It’s become a hybrid form of rugby league (nowt wrong with RL) and the games’ unique characteristics should be kept distinct.
“The biff and shoeing having been regulated and reffed out of it, as have all the different shapes and sizes, and it’s not the game I grew up with and enjoyed the most.
“That said, I’ll still rock up to support the firsts (using my Freedom Pass (!) for the away games) or my new mates in Chips 2s if there’s nothing doing at PJF.
“By the way: Fuck the RFU!”
Read more: Rapid decline in numbers shows that ‘coarse’ rugby is ‘at risk’
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