Coffee Table Book of: Rugby (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Rugby is a large format book of rugby, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: white posts in mist, frost and snow, old leather balls and boots, the kit and the training gear, village, valley, clifftop, upland and riverside pitches, clubhouses, changing rooms and stands, and a few players in plain dark clothing, seen from behind.

The kit is laid out plain: a ball on an orange kicking tee, a padded scrum cap, post protector pads, boots with screw in studs beside a stud key, a red tackle bag, a tackle shield against a fence, a heavy steel scrum machine, a silver whistle on a folded black shirt, a brass hand pump, training cones, a clear mouthguard, tag belts, strapping tape and scissors, and a net bag of white balls.

The making and care follow four oval panels of cowhide cut for a ball and stitched inside out in a wooden clamp, closed cell foam pads and navy cloth cut for a scrum cap, stacked leather studs nailed to a boot sole on an iron last, a groundsman pushing a line marker along a fresh white line, a heavy iron roller at the edge of the turf and pale and dark stripes rolled across the grass. The past runs from hand stitched leather balls, high ankle leather boots and an old cotton jersey with a cream collar to a tin bath in a tiled changing room and square cut timber goalposts peeling in long grass.

Short notes run through the book, on the laws and measures of the game, the kit and how it is made, the grounds and their weather, and the history of the sport: a kicking tee holds the ball steady for a kick at goal, tackle shields take the force of contact drills, a conversion adds two points to a try, and forwards tape their fingers and wrists before a match.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.