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International Rugby ? For Players, Coaches and Spectators (1983) by Don Rutherford. Heinemann. ISBN: 0434659150 . Condition: Fair. With the previous owner?s pink highlighter annotations throughout. There are few sports that combine such extraordinary levels of physical commitment with such astonishingly complicated rules. Rugby is a game in which thirty grown adults spend eighty minutes enthusiastically running into one another, only for someone in a blazer afterwards to calmly explain that it was all decided by an infringement involving the angle of a binding in the second row. Fortunately, Don Rutherford is here to help. Published in 1983, International Rugby sets out to explain the game for players, coaches and spectators alike. That is an admirably ambitious audience. Convincing players they should tackle lower is one thing. Persuading coaches they don?t already know everything is quite another. And as for spectators. many have been confidently explaining the offside law for decades without ever letting the official Laws of Rugby spoil a perfectly good argument. Rutherford was one of the game?s great teachers, and it shows. This is not merely a collection of tactics scribbled onto a clipboard during half-time. Instead, it is a thoughtful guide to understanding rugby as a complete sport?its skills, strategies, positions, discipline and endless tactical subtleties. It reminds us that the game is rather more sophisticated than simply giving the largest person on the pitch the ball and pointing vaguely towards the opposition?s try line. Reading a rugby manual from the early 1980s is also wonderfully nostalgic. This was rugby before professionalism transformed the sport into an elite, full-time occupation complete with GPS tracking, sports psychologists, nutritionists and enough performance analysts to invade a small country. Back then, many international players still held ordinary jobs during the week, turning up on Saturdays to tackle people built like wardrobe removers simply because they enjoyed it. One of the enduring pleasures of books like this is discovering how much?and how little?the game has changed. Modern players are undoubtedly faster, stronger and fitter, yet the essential ingredients remain reassuringly familiar. The ball is still stubbornly oval, scrums are still faintly mysterious to outsiders, and somewhere in every match there will be a spectator absolutely convinced the referee has never read the laws despite having devoted his entire weekend to enforcing them. This particular copy has acquired an extra layer of personality courtesy of a previous owner armed with a pink highlighter and a determined sense of purpose. Various passages have been underlined and annotated, suggesting someone studied this book with genuine intent. Whether they were an aspiring coach, an ambitious player, or simply someone preparing to win every post-match pub debate, we?ll never know. Their fluorescent observations now serve as an accidental conversation across the decades, quietly reminding us that books often have lives before they arrive on our shelves. The book is in fair condition , reflecting both its years and its enthusiastic use, but remains perfectly readable. If anything, the annotations add a certain lived-in authenticity. A rugby coaching manual that has never been opened feels faintly suspicious. One that has been studied, highlighted and carried around a changing room feels as though it has earned its place. From Crappy Old Books ?because some books spend forty years sitting untouched on immaculate shelves, while others are taken to muddy pitches, leafed through before training and consulted after painful defeats. We rather suspect this one belonged firmly in the second category. And if you happen to disagree with the anonymous commentator?s pink highlights, you?re already thinking like a rugby coach. THIS BOOK BEARS THE CRAPPY OLD BOOKS STAMP. IF THAT IS UNDESIRABLE PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS. THE STAMP MARKS WHICH I.
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