My 20 Years of Sport: 2015 - The Tour to end all Tours

By Nick Powell
From the end of January to the beginning of March, in anticipation of my 20th birthday and acceptance that professional sport is well and truly beyond me, I’m looking back through my 20 years to find the sporting memories that have had the biggest impact on me.

For this article I go back to 2015, where I was lucky enough to go on a rugby tour with my school to Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.

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2015: The Tour to end all Tours

It was a boiling April day in the mountaintop city of Ronda, in Spain’s Malaga province when my friend Bradley Denison suggested to me I apply for the rugby tour in 2015. I remember it so well because I hadn't applied specifically because I didn't think I had a chance in hell of getting on it. 

I used to say things like "I think there will be better trips" and "I'm probably going to be too busy next Summer", but deep down it was because I didn't fancy my chances. 

As referenced in my previous article about my school, I had my fair share of ups and downs and this particular season had been a disappointing one. I'd only played two games for the A team in a season where the team were plagued by injuries. 

The deadline had passed, but I decided to apply anyway, and was relieved when I was told they would still accept a few late applications. 

Fast forward a few months and injuries in pre-season combined with players being moved up to the 1s had meant that I had managed to sneak my way into the A team under our coach Mr Kothakota. 

My days as a versatile back-row have been put on hold since 2015. It's hard to see when they are going to return at the moment.

I was surprised to have made it in with him there, given the amount of disturbance I had caused in his Drama lessons two years prior, but the less of an annoying little s*** I became, the less Mr. Kothakota disliked me, funny that.

If it  hadn't been for him I wouldn't have made the tour, and for that I am hugely grateful to him. The School's Director of Rugby at the time revealed he had huge reservations about taking me, and that it was Mr. Kothakota who had insisted I go, and I was one of the last names added to the list. 

After a really enjoyable season playing U16's rugby I was so excited to go, but as the day approached, I was desperate for it to be as perfect as I'd told myself it would be.

And to be fair, it was pretty much perfect. 18 days travelling around three amazing countries, the culture, the food, the rugby and the camaraderie was just brilliant. 

When I look back, I cringe at some of the things I said and did on that Tour, and I can be quite full on sometimes, but that was the perks of having 50 other people there. Once one group had enough of me, I could divert my attention elsewhere. 

It's not as if I was an outcast before the Tour but it did so much for my confidence as a person. I was just being who I was, and people quite liked me. That, or they were just desperate to have a go with the greatest quiz book ever written.

I have taken this book pretty much everywhere I've been since that Tour.

My single most cherished possession in the World (along with the England Rugby Miscellany), was this book: "A Question of Sport Quiz Book". It had thousands of questions, different rounds and categories and brought massive groups together. 

As many as 25 would pack into some poor lad's hotel room as everyone eagerly gathered round to hear me read the questions. 

Over the years I have pulled this book out I have consistently played the role of question master, often insisting I was addressed as "Sue". 

I did it because, somewhat arrogantly, I presumed I was too good for the book, and the fact that whenever I did play I was immediately accused of having checked all the answers before (can neither confirm or deny).

But the enjoyment of the tour went far beyond pretending I was Sue Barker. We had been picked out really good, competitive opposition and I was playing in a great team who played a really exciting brand of rugby. 

It was thanks largely to Mr. Slater or "Slates", who's offloading, unstructured rugby (named after him) allowed the "Development XV", where I resided, to play some really entertaining stuff. 

Both teams went unbeaten on tour but there were some really competitive games.

Off the pitch I met some really nice and interesting lads too. Nico, the first person I was billeted with, gave me an Argentina kit and passionately spoke to me about the sovereignty of the Falklands, Juan, the person I stayed with in Chile twice carried me home from nights out, once in Santiago and once in Richmond, the latter being when he was staying at my house during their own tour in September.

The night before he left he remarked that "Japan are going to do great things" ahead of the 2015 Rugby World Cup. I thought he was talking absolute dross and said that USA were much more likely to do something. Japan ended the tournament with 4 wins from 5, including the scalp of South Africa, the USA finished bottom of the same group without a single point. Shows how much I know about the sport.

Juan had called that Japan would cause an upset and they did. Perhaps the greatest upset in a single match that sport, let alone rugby, has ever seen.

If I had to thank everyone that made those three weeks so enjoyable, I don't think I'd ever reach the end of this article. It was just a brilliant atmosphere to be part of. 

It was also really important to the 2016/17 1st XV having the bond between the two year groups that made the off-the-field friendships in the team so strong and playing for that team so enjoyable.

But most importantly, past some initiations (without body fluids, yes you can actually have fun that way!), there was none of the hierarchical bulls**t that makes it so uncomfortable for people to play senior rugby. 

The same hierarchical culture that I believe explains the staggering dropout rates (roughly 80%) we suffer in this country between the ages of 16 and 19, and why so many people wait until they are in their mid-twenties at least before taking the sport up again. 

I'm not trying to be puritanical, but seriously, why is it that so many rugby players take pleasure in abusing people that are younger than them? I'm all for alcohol-based initiations but you hear dozens of stories you hear these days about poor students who put through humiliating, vile and sometimes dangerous ordeals. 

Are the severely overdone initiations we see these days really about "Team building"?

I will probably never do an initiation again, and was lucky enough not to be forced to do anything on the scale of the kind of stories you hear in the news. I was made to drink booze and do the occasional physical challenge but that's as far as it went and as far as it should go.

Without question I had, and probably still do, the potential to be really vexing as person. For that and other reasons, I could well have been left out and ripped apart by the older players. 

But that didn't happen, everyone just had a laugh with everyone, it didn't matter what the team or year group you were in. It's the way a tour, and a collective squad should be.

Whilst this is beginning to sound like the article about the OH I wrote a few days ago I think it further highlights an important and (pretty lame but true) point. 

Sport has an ability to bring together very different people. Whether that is as part of a team, billeting together during a tour or even gathering round a Question of Sport book. That tour showed me something very clear about what to do when you are forced together in a group. 

Getting to know each other through having a laugh together, rather than at someone's expense and a culture of respect, rather than fear is the way to create the glue that brings a squad together.

That is team-building.