Advent 10

Volume 10 (Game to Gunm): Gastropoda.

I would be better off leaving this one to The Groupie, among whose many accomplishments is a Zoology degree. Let's crib straight from Britannica before going off on a cheery tangent, because yesterday's entry was a tad bleak.

A large group of invertebrate anaimals ranked as a class of the phylum Mollusca and represented by such familiar forms as the limpet, the whelk, the common snail and slug.

So they don't have to have a shell but they do have to lack a backbone. Thus slugs are of their number and I will talk to you today about the best season of rugby I ever played. Now this is not much of a boast because although not useless, I was never a great player. However there was one season when I scored a fair number of tries and played to the peak of my limited powers. And at the core of this happy time was my great friend RAM, who, on account of a mildly stocky stature and a lack of burning pace was jovially nicknamed 'The Slug'. But boy did he have a head on his shoulders and a left boot that was highly educated. He captained me, generally from full-back or occasionally from fly-half, and he trusted me to get on with my game. I have played under better tacticians and under better players but when I stop to think about it (and I still often do) nobody got as much out of me as this honest man did. He had a backbone, and some.