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Updated: May 26, 2025
"I mean, I don't think I've ever met anyone before who didn't know what a scrum-half was." "Well, I can see that it has something to do with football, so we'll leave it at that. I suppose it's something like our quarter-back. And what's an international?" "It's called getting your international when you play for England, you know. England plays Wales, France, Ireland, and Scotland.
I'd been having a most awfully good time at the 'varsity," said Ginger, warming to his theme. "Not thick, you know, but good. I'd got my rugger and boxing blues and I'd just been picked for scrum-half for England against the North in the first trial match, and between ourselves it really did look as if I was more or less of a snip for my international." Sally gazed at him wide eyed.
He was tall and dark and lachrymose, with bloodshot eyes, and breath that stank of gin. He had played scrum-half for College in '98; and had prepared for ordination. "You'll understand, old man," he said, "how out of place I am amongst this scum hoi polloi we're not of the hoi polloi, are we?" It seemed nicer to agree.
But as, panting and flushed from her run, she was prettier than any girl he had yet met, he contrived to smile. "Not at all," he said in answer to her question, though it was far from the truth. His left big toe was aching confoundedly. Even a girl with a foot as small as Sally's can make her presence felt on a man's toe if the scrum-half who is handling her aims well and uses plenty of vigour.
And just at that moment the players came quite near where I was, and about a dozen assassins in red hurled themselves violently on top of a meek-looking little fellow who had just fallen on the ball. Ginger, you are well out of it! That was the scrum-half, and I gathered that that sort of thing was a mere commonplace in his existence.
"Is that good or bad?" she asked. "Eh?" "Are you reciting a catalogue of your crimes, or do you expect me to get up and cheer? What is a rugger blue, to start with?" "Well, it's... it's a rugger blue, you know." "Oh, I see," said Sally. "You mean a rugger blue." "I mean to say, I played rugger footer that's to say, football Rugby football for Cambridge, against Oxford. I was scrum-half."
A babel of laughter, of chatter, every now and again men tumbled against one another, like cubs in a cave, and rolled upon the floor. Lawrence, his feet planted wide apart, was standing in the middle of an admiring circle, explaining something very slowly. "If the old scrum-half," he was saying, "only stood back enough " What a splendid lot they were! What a life it was!
Edwards, a heavy, clumsy scrum-half, was captain of the side; Gordon led the scrum. "If only we had Armour back as House captain," Hunter used to complain, "that side couldn't lose." "And we sha'n't lose either," said Gordon; "we are going to sweep the field next term, and we are going to drive the ball over the line somehow, and God save anyone who gets in the light."
Well Dune had failed them, the forwards were heeling so slowly, the scrum-half was never getting the ball away it was a miserable affair. The Dublin forwards pressed again. For a long time the two bodies of men swayed backwards and forwards; in the University twenty-five Lawrence was performing wonders.
"Was he a scrum-half, too?" asked Sally, dimpling. Ginger looked shocked. "You don't have two scrum-halves in a team," he said, pained at this ignorance on a vital matter. "The scrum-half is the half who works the scrum and..." "Yes, you told me that at Roville. What was Gerald Mr. Foster then? A six and seven-eighths, or something?"
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