BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
Twenty yards from the end of the pitch there stands the tree where I paid my respects.
On the branches of this tree used to hang tied up shopping bags full of dressings, pins, bandages, eye pads and tape. In the cracks in its trunk there’d be a rusty pair of scissors, an old tobacco tin filled with waterproof plasters and that dreaded bottle of TCP. A patient’s chair – one of those horrible plastic garden chairs that crack then pinch your leg hairs – used to sit under the tree.
As a winger, “Dom, your ear’s hanging off, mate,” were words I’d hoped I’d never hear. (At least one ear was still intact to hear them). And so, I strolled over to the tree where I sat down in the chair to have a load of TCP splashed all over the open wound – one dared not flinch or yell – before getting my head coiled round in dressings and bandages until I looked like Mr Bump. Then back onto the rugby pitch I trotted to a few charitable claps from regulars and much teasing from teammates. We won that day and a few refreshers were imbibed but peeling off the bloody dressings later at UCLH was still one of the most painful experiences I can recall.
Over the years the first aid department has improved a lot at the club, just as medicine has progressed in leaps and bounds since the Crimean War and Nightingale. Professional first aiders wait hand and foot on my professional successors. Sanitised gloves even make an appearance in first aid boxes.
On visiting the tree last weekend, I was amused to find that a rusty pair of scissors were still stuck into it under some loose bark. Hanging from the tree were a pair of secateurs no doubt left there by the treasured old groundsman/first aid deliverer/barman who succumbed to old age last month.
As I stood by the tree, I remembered his ever-twinkling eyes which looked in different directions, his ever-present grin and his grimy, gloveless hands that were lifesavers to so many boys and men. I recalled his cacophonous laughter from back one hot September when he assumed the role of the post around which we would run whilst playing the post-match hockey stick drinking game – spin around a dozen times with a hockey stick stuck in the ground touching your forehead, drink a pint then run, in a relay, around Old Mick and back to where you had started … next … repeat … as we faceplanted all over the place and ended up dizzy wrecks, the scrum half projectile vomiting on our American prop forward.
The tree, less festooned, seemed the same. Timeless. One of a large family of ancient trees across those parks.
As the sun shone down on this autumnal scene, I reached out to touch the tree then sat on a pile of leaves up against its bark where once I’d collapsed after consuming far too many schnapps jellies at a local party.
The day of that party I felt I was going to die under that tree. I probably would have done if Old Mick had not rescued me when he did. I have no idea how I got there but a guardian angel no doubt led me there.
Mick emerged in the early morning from his pavilion to save me. He kept me conscious with cold water then cooked up some spaghetti hoops on a camping stove to nourish me. Then he gave me a right old dressing down, talking of players he’d known at the club who had died young from stupidity, warning me that he’d be forced to tell the club and coach of my drunken delinquency.
He never told a soul.
I played the following Saturday and Mick went out of his way to pat me on the back as we returned victorious to the changing rooms. I can still see his face: ‘Celebrate with a lemonade, Dom,’ he smiled.
Here I was making an important pilgrimage.
To Mick.
To the healing tree.
And Mick was there. In the wind and the sunshine. He was still there, drifting around like the crisp autumn leaves in his favourite place in the whole universe.
Dominic Wightman is Editor of Country Squire Magazine.