Rugby is tough. Growing old is tougher, and playing rugby at any age above, say, 35, is toughest yet! (Just ask any Old Boy - and even if what I write isn't true, you'd never get an Old Boy to admit it. There's too much credibility at stake - after all, "The older you are, the better you were.")

Old Boys hurt more because we're older. Don't bother describing how much more intense your first side match is, and how much more sore the bruises are - that's immaterial. It's sort of like Farina's comment to a barnyard animal in an Old Gang short: "Chicken, I is four times more tired than you because I is four times bigger than you."

There is something endearing about the sight of middle-aged men "sprinting" down a field with a rugby ball, doing lineouts and scrums. Incredibly, this happens all across America (and elsewhere in the rugby world) daily, as if rugby wasn't one of the world's toughest and most body-damaging sports. What are those old guys thinking?

Well, we're thinking we're young again, and we're regaining the basic joy of running on a field while handling a ball. (And also ritualistically wrapping our heads with electrical tape.) After all, rugby was invented by English schoolboy geniuses; what may have been unexpected is that deep down inside we're still all English schoolboys, the pitch is green and lush, and there's a nice cooling breeze and onlookers interested in watching us play.