The Rats developed in the late 1980s as a social side, a mixture of non-trainers, veterans and students, taking on the lower combination sides. With a tradition of touring (well, a big piss up in Berlin every year), the Rats over time became a pure veterans side, the last resting place of many ex-Clifton or Bristol first-team players. In the late 1990s, early 2000s, the Rats became a team feared by most other Vets sides, and many a Combination first and second team, and very rarely lost.
Now we're all nearly 50 or over 50, things are a little harder. We started to lose games each September because the opposition had been cheating (pre-season training). We started to lose some Vets games because the opposition there cheated too (using players who were barely over 35).
We are no longer Rebels Against Time and Senility. Time and senility, like our opponents, are beginning to win. But what the hell. We've played in Berlin, Ottowa, Toronto, Boston, Cape Cod, Vancouver, Victoria island, San Francisco, Monterrey, Cape Town, Constantia, Jersey, Harare, Bulawayo, Victoria Falls, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Perth, Sydney, Cairns, Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Vina del Mar, Valparaiso, Prague, Dublin, Havana, Venice, Malmo and Copenhagen.
On our travels we\'ve also won the World Vets tournament, played the Pumas vets, escaped from Alcatraz and Robben Island, gone on safari in the Zimbabwe bush, skied the Rockies and the Andes, scuba dived the Barrier Reef, climbed the Sydney Harbour bridge, joined the Hong Kong Sports Club, enjoyed caviar and champagne at the Bolshoi, Singapore Slings in Raffles, fine wines in Sonoma and Stellenbosch, gambled in Vegas, danced tango in Buenos Aires, rolled cigars in Cuba, played beach volleyball on Copacabana, surfed on Bondi, been arrested for kissing immigration officials on the River Plate, and white-water rafted the Zambezi.
Oh, and we went to Wales once but we didn't like it much because they charged us to get over the bridge and we couldn\'t find the Irish bar.
Editors note - articles have been received from various sources and often of unknown date.
1) If you are a former RAT and have some info to post please email to editor@cliftonrugby.co.uk
2) Readers please read the articles in the spirit they were written their views do not necessarily represent the view of Clifton Rugby club and have been posted with little review. If you have any questions please email to editor@cliftonrugby.co.uk
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Keep fit, run fast, tackle hard, hold your passes, kick your goals, retain possesion. Any damn fool team can win by doing that. No, it takes guts and experience to win without doing these things. And the Rats are blessed with many years' experience and a fine collection of guts.
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Revenge is a dish best served cold, the sages have it. Having lost only about once a season throughout the nineties, the requirement to mete out revenge is a concept unfamiliar to the Rats. And though against Weston it was served mild and damp, it tasted just as sweet.
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The final Rats away game - Weston 2005.
It was an occasion writ large in the unsteady hearts and senile minds of the ageing Rats. The very last away fixture. In the UK anyway. And who better to share the moment than our old friends from Weston, with whom we have jousted home and away for many a year in highly entertaining Friday floodlit games.
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At last back to true Rats form, a mere 6 months into the season. With a crisp, sunny day and a decent ref, it was a game to savour, maybe only the second such this year. Before the proceedings, as we bent to touch our knees, and Mr Crawford took his tenth and final pre-combat nicotine ingestion, we watched St. Mary's run pacily through their drills. Silly boys. They will learn.
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It was a triumphal return, His Holiness Pope Hickey having been laid low of late by a dodgy ankle, calf, knee, hamstring, hip and back. But three puffs of white smoke atop St Brendans’ clubhouse, known locally as The Vatican, signalled His Holiness’s re-ascendancy to the coveted number 10 slot. In truth, the Rats were pleased to see him – hard won ball would be kicked away of course, but at least foreign tours might be back on the schedule. As for the papal smoke, “praise the Lord” might have uttered Mr Watson Senior, a believer from Bath. “Injuns” shouted Mr Woodman, a cowboy from Whitchurch.
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Having hitherto played in only two South American countries, in May 2002 the Rats set about dealing with this unfortunate lapse in protocol by visiting Chile. Chilean rugby? Well their national team are a good side you know, holding their own against Argentina, USA, Canada and the like. (Does this sound like an excuse in the making?)
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RATS 2004-05 Farewell Season |
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Well, the writing was on the wall, really. We delayed the start of the season until October so the grounds would be a little softer on our world-weary limbs. But we still found it difficult each week to coax enough old lags along to stand at the front of the line-out where the shirt numbers are low and the postcodes are high. Especially when some of them defect to the First XV.
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Twas early one morn, the day before Christmas and ten fine gentlemen of the Rats transported to Hallen to relish in the hospitality of the former chaps of the Queen Elizabeth School for Boys. Alas ten is not usually enough for a game of rugby, especially if one of your number, Mr Wilcox, poorly versed in the arts of husbandhood, must depart at half time to go shopping.
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The heavens had opened overnight and Rats Stadium, without a closing roof, had acquired a distinctly bog-like status. Providence indeed, given the young whelps barely out of swaddling who opposed us that day. Revenge against the Elizabethans was uppermost in our mind but from the kick off these pups spread the ball wide and scored before we’d laced our boots. Too keen by half. One day they’ll learn to shave and masturbate, and also learn that if they’d run it again, perhaps they would have scored again.
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Lydney
Alert as ever to the club’s financial needs, ten good men and true of Rats calibre, average age 46 and counting, presented themselves for duty on behalf of the Wanderers, for the South West Merit Table fixture against Lydney. Saving the club a £100 fine was our mission. Earning the absent Wanderers a well-deserved point our outcome, courtesy of a thrilling 36-36 draw. The men of the Forest were a fine well-drilled unit, so close was their understanding that one could be forgiven for wondering if they were perhaps all related. But, augmented by some younger fellows, had the Rats tackled, or retained possession at crucial moments, perhaps we …… no, perhaps not. You’ve heard that one before.
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RATS 
