posted on 19 Jul 2019

Rugby Academy by Tom Palmer

OK. I’m going to have to come clean. I loathe the game of rugby with something close to a passion. Some of my most miserable school days were spent trying to work out just how I could dodge the weekly winter misery of the muddy, smelly and potentially violent rugby pitch and the inevitable humiliation it entailed. Being an unsporty fat boy at a school that, for reasons beyond my understanding, thought rugby should be a game all boys play regardless of aptitude, skill or willingness, was a miserable stain on my teenage years.

When Tom Palmer’s Rugby Academy, an anthology of rugby stories – Combat Zone, Deadlocked and Surface To Air – came through the post for review, my initial feeling was to say, thanks but no thanks. And that’s exactly where I would have left it had I not already read two of Palmer’s other books – The Armistice Runner and D-Day Dog – which were good enough to make me think again. Could a writer as good as Palmer make me overcome my deep-seated dread of rugby.

Well, the answer is a qualified yes. Qualified because I still have no affection for or understanding of the game but Palmer is a first class story teller who doesn’t find himself limited to simple descriptions of heroic acts of derring-do on the rugby field – although, to be fair, there’s probably enough of that to satisfy rugby fans. But for us non-rugby types, the stories focus on the dilemmas facing three boys who are friends and room-mates at Borderlands school and they are the sorts of problems that translate across to everyone who has had to deal with parents in dangerous situations, making new friends, dealing with enemies and competing to do your best for yourself and your team.

Each full length story in the anthology puts the focus on a different boy but there is a chronological progression to the stories that take place over a defined time period and with a common cast of characters. Borderlands is a rugby school and doesn’t tolerate the playing of football so when Woody’s dad insists he should go there, he’s not a all happy given that he sees himself as a future football star. It turns out that, like Woody’s dad, many of the children at the school have fathers in the armed forces and when the threat of war breaks out, they find they have much in common.

Woody rooms with Rory – who becomes the focus of the second story, Deadlocked – and Owen who features at the heart of Surface To Air. As Woody adjusts to the demands of rugby he finds he’s something of a natural and is quickly promoted to the first team. All three boys share the experience of national and international school tournaments – with all the ups and downs that involves. Palmer makes sure that there’s light and shade in his stories and I thought it was excellent that the ‘baddies’ in these stories aren’t cartoon villains but complex characters in their own right. Jesse, for example, not only turns out to be ‘difficult’ he’s also brilliant at rugby and an inspirational captain.

I would guess that children – boys especially – aged from about 10-14 would love these books and to have them combined together in a single anthology is a real plus.

 

Terry Potter

July 2019