"A Hand in Bristol is special, the Hands are special; the legends go with it…" Ian McGeechan, British Lions Coach 1997
The slightly more astute rugby critics among you will realise that these words are in fact not entirely attributable to the ’97 Lions coach. The sentiment of these now immortal words though rings as true for the Hands as it did for Martin Johnson’s victorious side. The story of the Wandering Hands Rugby Football Club in Bristol is indeed shrouded in myth and legend. Very few players get to wear the coveted white and red shirt, and those that do have the privilege, wear it with a fierce pride. It takes a big player to fill the shirt and etch their name permanently in the annals of Hands history.
But to quote Mao Tse Tung, the spirit of the Hands is not about the individual; "it concerns the collective". The legend of the Hands lives not because of the long list of singly brilliant players to have worn the cupped hand over their breast, but instead because of the spirit of the club as a whole and what it stands for.
The aim of this article is to shed some light on the mysterious origins of the club, in order that future Hands may continue the legacy in the grand old tradition, and join the close circle of friends who have played, and won, for the Hands. Those players who, to borrow from a certain British Lions coach, will be able to walk down the street years from now, and merely have to exchange a look. No words. Just a look. We were part of it. Something special….
Rome, as they say, was not built in a day. The Hands had relatively modest beginnings before they attained the dizzying heights they are used to occupying today.
After leaving Teddies St Edward’s School, Oxford, where I captained the 1st XV, I joined Bristol University in October 1995, having recently returned from a year in New Zealand playing for Hautapu RFC in the Waikato. Obviously I was keen to play for the university side, and duly attended the pre-season sessions, and managed to get a place in the seconds as a Lucy.
However, to my disappointment, the university club scene was not as I had envisioned it. As with a great deal of university teams, there were too many name-droppers and hangers on. The rugby was good, but the social side of it was far too cliquey and back-stabbing. I stuck the season out, whilst growing more and more frustrated with the confines of university rugby. What I really wanted was to play some decent rugby with guys who you would be more than happy to go for a few pints with afterwards – or if so inclined before, or even during (not as uncommon as you might think, particularly in the early years…not mentioning any names Big Will…) the game.
And so the season ended, and I resigned myself to playing for the geography department, which whilst brimming with enthusiasm and full of really decent chaps, was perhaps a little short on talent and organisation (and I’m sure they won’t mind me saying so!).
In the second year I moved out of Badock and into a house in Clifton Village with Matt Price and Angus Dodwell. Matt was a Cardiff boy(o) who liked pies and Liverpool. We were in the same unit in Badock and quickly became friends. He also loved Web Ellis’ great game, and had an odd penchant for calling me "bro" in a Maori accent (on account of the ridiculous twang I had picked up in NZ – have you seen Once were Warriors?!). Angus was a friend from my days at Teddies who although having extremely girly floppy blond hair and saying "ya" a lot, had played a bit of rugger at school for the 5th XV.
After spending many afternoons at the pub watching the autumn internationals, I was desperate to play again. Matt and Angus were also keen to reacquaint themselves with a spot of egg chasing. One evening, after several cans of Stella and having sent our female housemates off to do the washing up, Matt, Angus and I were debating the finer points of southern hemisphere rucking, when Angus said out of the blue; "Why don’t we set up our own club?" Actually, that’s not what he said exactly, as he was a bit incoherent after his second lager shandy, but that was about the gist of it.
In any case, it turned out to be a fine idea. We discussed at length the sort of club it would be. Who would we play? And more importantly, would we be any good? I certainly knew a lot of players who had quit the university team for the same reasons I had. Angus, typically, had a huge number of acquaintances from the Debs circuit he was courting, and some of them were quite useful. Pricey, typically, didn’t care as long as there would be pies and Brains Bitter.
We knew that there were a large number of Teddies old boys at Bristol and UWE, many of whom had played rugby and weren’t too shabby. So that was it – it would be a team for ex-Teddies lads, and other assorted friends and ringers. And we would conquer the world – well, at least the Bristol inter-mural league…
There was one obstacle that we still needed to cross – we needed a name. Inter-Mural tradition dictates that such a club’s name should certainly be humorous, and preferably lewd. Many epithets were floated about before we finally settled on that now famous name. Such "alternative endings" included the Morning Glories and Teddies Exiles, but these were all rejected on the sole basis of being spectacularly terrible. Then we had one of those "eureka" moments – you know; the ones that get played in slow motion to Strauss’ "Thus Spake Zarathustra" in movies. Back in our school days, there had been an irreverent satirical magazine published annually by the students – The Wandering Hand. It seemed perfect – a club for Teddies and other rugby (old) hands, who, like the Ronin of feudal Japan, were without clan, wandering the verdant grasslands of Coombe Dingle and needing uniting in a common cause. The name was also, being true to the grand traditions I mentioned earlier, cheeky in that uniquely British end-of-the-pier kind of way.
And so there could be no other…. and we set about rounding up a fine body of men to try and beat into some sort of shape and team.
Sponsorship was a problem in our first year – we needed the money then and there, but unfortunately all the local businesses had already "allocated their budgets"; which when duly translated meant "Did you honestly think I was going to give a load of our hard earned cash to a posh boy and a hairy Maori to buy some rugby shirts with?!" Chiquitos to their credit however, told us to come back next year. So we did. Later.
The season had to go on regardless though. We got the shirts, we got the players, we got the pitch (did we get the insurance? – er, I don’t remember…) but most importantly we got the opposition.
Manor Hall kindly accepted our challenge, which to my disappointment, unlike the Boat Race, involved no ceremonial throwing of gauntlets or other suitably grand gestures. And so it was that Manor Hall now have the distinguished accolade of being the first team to be turned over by the genius of the Hands.
Yes, we won. And we won well. I forget the score but it was well into the 40s with no reply. Our opening try came from the first scrum of the game. On their 22 on the right side, I picked up from the base of the scrum, and skinned their winger on the outside. Before I could work out how that had happened, their full back covered across, and so I took the tackle and unloaded back inside to Matt Price who somehow had got out of the loose head position and made up the ground to flop over the line and open our account.
He was duly punished that night in the court session for this most heinous crime with a yard of ale which he accepted graciously.
And then the floodgates opened. We ran in try after try, many set up by Kenner, our Bath RFC inside centre, who the opposition soon started marking with 4 of their backs, which as you will imagine left them somewhat open (Kenner began to hog the ball after he realised he could score at will, and so we were forced to drop him permanently after a repeat performance in the second game….!!).
Those Magnificent Men..?
The team on that historic first performance was something like:
Matt Price; Robson & Jerome; Big Will Chauner; Big Dave; James Chunky Davies; Angus Dodwell; Si Mew; Phil Haworth (capt); Mark "Stowee" Stowe; Sam Geddes; Ed Barron; Kenner; Ed Carver; Jonas Osher; Duncan Laurie-Pile and Tony Ferrino Nicol. Other Hands from that first season included Toby Mostyn, Si Walker, Tim from NZ, Paul Charlton Ollerenshaw, Alun Jones and Paul Haworth (my brother). Apologies to any players I have left out, but unlike the beautiful Cleopatra, age does in fact wither me, and custom seems to stale my infinite variety somewhat…(look it up…)
Mention must be made at this point of some key individuals.
"Big" Will Chauner was the self-appointed social secretary. A biochemist, the Big-Yin offers the best evidence to date to the scientific community that the fabled Sasquatch; with its shambling gait, mysterious odours and opposable thumbs; is indeed alive, if not always quite so well, and living in Clifton Village. As they say; a good big’n always beats a good little’un…
Jonas Osher, whilst always looking pretty out on the wing for Tamsin, is probably the Hands most capped player. He has been with the club since day 1, due to the ridiculous length of his degree, which is Dentistry. I would imagine that dentists need fairly steady hands for their line of work. I sincerely hope, for the sake of dental patients everywhere, that his on-field handling is no barometer of his surgical skills….
Tony "Ferrino" Nichol at full back. An incredibly gifted and pacey player who gave up a promising university career to play for the Hands, at least when he wasn’t moaning about his infamous shoulder injury. His wife, Claire has been the Hands most ardent supporter over the years, travelling down from her sports shop in Banbury whenever her beloved was on the field. Thanks for all the kicking tees! (Not that it helped Tony slot them though…..)
I would also like to point out that Paul Charlton Ollerenshaw is NOT a bus driver. Ding Ding – tickets please!
Our first season finished having won more than we had lost; and was therefore deemed a success. Our reputation was growing, and teams were genuinely keen to beat us. We made eternal enemies of the Vets; a fixture that to this day has all the tension and emotion of a true derby grudge match; and held the university 3rd XV to a slightly embarrassing 13-18, the university avoiding the draw in the last minute with a break away try. Our end of season soiree at the Cul-de-Sac restaurant under Tommy Tuckers was a great success (apart from the unfortunate incident with the Clifton Constabulary), and we looked forward to greater things in the next season.
As promised, we returned to Chiquitos who to our surprise and delight kept their word – the marketing manager Tina English provided us with a princely sum for our shirts and other expenses. Oh, how our coffers bulged; as did the eyeballs of the HSBC manager who opened our corporate account in the name of the Wandering Hands RFC.
By now, I was now living with Angus and another mate called Giles Marshall. Giles pointed out that we should have a logo – I agreed, saying that the only reason that we didn’t have one was that although I had been blessed as a child with opposable thumbs, I had yet to learn how to co-ordinate them into creating some semblance of what could be called a drawing. A computer genius (finger firmly pressed against forehead), we told him of our vision for the logo, and before we knew it, Giles had merged together a couple of medical drawings from clipart in Office, and the logo we all know and love was born.
And so the fancy shirts were bought (thanks to Chiquitos and the Fraternity House) and a new look Hands took to the paddock. We brought several new players into the side in the second season, including Si Tedridge, Pete Wilder, Tim Ramsdale, Jo Appleby and Dom Turner – all Teddies lads and keen to join the ranks. Sadly, Pricey left us to spend a year with the old enemy in Poitiers, and his presence in the front row was sorely missed.
This season was spectacularly successful – the highlight being the 22-38 defeat of the Medics in a hard fought clash at Brislington with an injury ravaged side. We made life-long friends of Geolsoc (The Geology Society) who despite losing to us by over a hundred points asked for rematch after rematch to try and raise their standards (although receiving a weekly battering is not a training technique I’d recommend, especially for the youngsters out there…) and culminated in them scoring their first ever try after a 30 second period of sustained pressure (30 seconds was the only possession they had, mind). They are a great bunch of lads and I can thoroughly recommend any side playing them.
We went the remainder of the season unbeaten. Racking up victories against the Engineers, the Vets, any number of hall sides and the Lawyers; we also reached the semi-final of the Seventh Heaven 7s plate tournament.
The Christmas dinner at the Fraternity House was a great success, due in no short measure to the WHRFC membership cards that they’d given us that allowed us cheap ale. Speeches were made, backs were slapped (by the forwards…) and much merriment was made whilst the snow fell; deep and crisp and even…(It is possible that these membership cards had something to do with the closure of the Fraternity House at the end of the season – there was talk overheard from the management of "not making any sort of profit", and "these figures can’t be right"…)
Teddy and Pete Wilder were appointed as the new team captains and managers, as I was graduating at the end of the year.
I was sad to leave the club that I had worked so hard to build, but remained happy in the knowledge that the club had grown bigger than any individual – it had grown feathers and was ready to fly on its own. Our reputation was soaring – we earned a special mention at the AU dinner (although sadly no invites…) and the clubs prospects looked good – a wealth of untapped talent was emerging amongst the Fresher contingent.
Tale was heard that some players (who should have known better) were even claiming to have played for the Hands when they had done no such thing. And so the legend and mystery surrounding the Wandering Hands grew.
The Hands has metamorphosed into an extremely well established and successful club. 2001 marks the birth of the newly formed Wandering Hands London RFC. Many players from the original Bristol set-up will gravitate on London after graduation. The London branch will play corporate sides and other local clubs, and will welcome any Ex-Hand from Bristol into its ranks, and any other player of similar attitude for that matter (Interested folk should contact Phil Haworth at phil@50ascot.freeserve.co.uk.
The Hands will continue to thrive as long as its fabled team spirit and camaraderie remains. Rugby is a social game that should above all be fun. Many people believe that a "fun" rugby team will be one full of overweight prop forwards who want a bit of a ruck, or to sink a few beers; or more likely both. The Wandering Hands aims to break this mould. Rugby can be both fun and of a high quality. Having fun is the priority – but there is nothing wrong with wanting to win, and winning well. Long may this legacy continue.
Ian McGeechan once said, "Some days in your life are special. Make it special." The Hands will always try to make it special.
We are The Wandering Hands.
We are legend…