I like to tell the story of when I first played with Billy. Before the match he was duct-taping egg crate around his waste and jamming insolite padding into his jersey on-top of his shoulders. That was 1997, Billy was 25 years old. Life's been rough for Billy and it looks like he was up to his old tricks this weekend at the Old Boys match.
Could be his uncanny resemblance to Charles Manson, or maybe it's the stripped jersey but Billy looks like an escaped con. At least he didn't start a fight with the ref... again.
In my 10+ years with the Club I've seen Billy Love retire from rugby and come back at least 3 times and each time he got better and better. The last season as Pasadena's #9, Billy was truly amazing to watch. Then at the age of 72 he was able to effortlessly make it to every breakdown without the use of his walker yet still deliver a quick clean ball to the Fly. After watching Billy play this last weekend I wondered why, oh why god do they not make them like this any more. Billy has spent more time in the Sin Bin than is the age of 1/2 of the players on the Warlords... which is a good place to be if you are the starting half-back. Note that he also has the ability to wear compression shorts like parachute pants. Come back to us Billy, we need you now more than ever
Saturday was a great mix of young and very old. Here we see Pasadena Rookie Luke Hornblower attempt the ill advised 2 finger tackle to bring down Mike Aston.
One time in a 7's match against Godzilla (an all Japanese 7's side) we saw 5 guys all hanging onto Aston not much unlike a pack of jackals trying to take down a water buffalo. It looked a little like this
Aaron Tanner: "Hey Harry, man I haven't seen you since the time you punched that chick on the pub crawl and my wife was given a subpoena... good times man, good times.
As was pointed out to the new members of the club, one day if you are lucky you too will be an Old Boy just like Chris Stellern
For more pictures from the Old Boy's match, check out the link above.
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