Page 28 of The Player in New Zealand
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “But maybe stick with the throwing stars.”
EIGHT
I’d spentthe weekend making sure Tane and Nina were aware that I knew absolutely nothing about rugby. Nina insisted I come to the youth game anyway, and offered to pick me up.
I was out front of the hostel at five on Monday. Nina drove a beater, an old station wagon with the Toyota logo on the hood, but a model I didn’t recognize.
I was, however, surprised to find only one seat available: the front passenger seat was occupied by Nina’s husband, Hemi, a heavyset guy with glasses who seemed close to Nina’s age and with similar dark skin. In the back were their two daughters in car seats. For some reason I hadn’t thought about Nina’s family joining us.
“Oh, hi,” I said to no one in particular.
“Claire, you remember Hemi?”
Hemi waved from his seat.
“Yeah, hey, Hemi.”
“Girls, say hi to Claire. Sorry, you’ll have to squeeze in between them.”
I opened the back door and ducked down, contorting myself to fit in between the front seat and one of the girls, who helpfully kicked me in the boob.
Once plopped down in the middle seat, I gave Nina wide eyes through the rearview mirror. I was not adept at kids. Usually when Nina or Hemi brought them into the bar, we kept a fair distance between us while I worked and they played.
“Oh, relax, Claire. They don’t bite.”
Nope, just kick.
“Which is which again?” I asked. Okay, Natty, on my left, was older, maybe three or four. Old enough to kick me in the boob and giggle at me. Nora, her younger sister, on my right, gurgled and stuck her hand in her mouth. “Are you excited to watch some rugby?”
Natty giggled. “You talk funny.”
“Who me?” I laid it on thick. “I’m just sitting here with your sistah in the cah.”
The girls both giggled now and I relaxed a little on the drive to the field. This was my first time to see most of the staff outside of work, outside of my uniform. It was a little chilly, so I’d dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with a retro logo that read “Live and Let Die” with a D20over one of my boobs.
Nina had brought folding chairs, so we hauled them out of the trunk and across the grassy fields to the crowd. Young boys, preteens, were running warm-ups on the field, looking like any high school sports team getting ready for a game. Tane was easy to spot, pacing on the sidelines and shouting at the boys. He was dressed in a bright blue jersey with matching rugby shorts—short shorts—with a flash of gray Lycra peeking out from underneath.
There were a few familiar faces there already, and others who I assumed were parents. Hemi and the girls wandered off to play with some kids closer to the girls’ ages. I settled in and greeted the staff members around us. Nina opened a cooler between our chairs and I picked out a beer.
“Everyone’s pretty excited, and I’m a bit surprised Tane even invited us to come,” she said.
“Why is that?”
She sipped her beer. “It’s the first time I think I’ve seen him interested in rugby again since his injury.”
“That’s a lot of change since I met him.”
“It is,” Nina agreed. “Almost gives me hope.”
A whistle blew and practice drills turned into what I was sure must have been a game. Nina tried to explain the ins and outs of rugby to me. I’d thought that maybe since I didn’t have much knowledge about football, soccer, or rugby, I wouldn’t have to reconfigure a sports thing I already knew and would have an easier time following... but that didn’t appear to be the case. It got complicated. There was union rugby, rugby sevens, and touch rugby. The game being played was touch rugby in a summer coaching clinic.
But the weather was nice, the company was chatty, and I had a few beers. It was fun to watch Tane stalk up and down the sidelines and talk to the kids. The kids were in the ten-to-twelve range, I thought, and Tane often bent over, hands on his knees, to get down to their level.
Sometimes he bent over facing away from me. He might have gone a little soft in his retirement, but he still had quite the bubble butt.
I wondered about his knee, and how it was doing with all the pacing and bending, but I was sure Tane would have been affronted at the idea that he couldn’t do something like coaching a youth league. It didn’t seem to bother him, though.
After two forty-minute halves, the game was called, and Tane’s boys won. We cheered as the teams shook hands and Tane’s team celebrated. Nina and I stood off to the side, watching Tane as kids bounced around him. Some of them were the boys from the team, but some were younger, little siblings of the team members.
