Rugby Head by Greg Bruce (Penguin, $35) Reviewer: Louise Ward
Since childhood, Greg Bruce's life has spun in four-year cycles (yes, around the Rugby World Cup). His obsession with the game is not unparalleled, but unique in its connection to his mental health and his world view.
The book begins withBuck Shelford's scrotum. I've tried this phrase out on a few people and they've all said 'ah, yes,' but this was the first I'd heard of it being a) born in England and b) not much of a rugby head. The legend of said scrotum is laid bare by the author, the anecdotes, the apocryphal stories, and Shelford's own account, which gets a few matter-of-fact sentences in his autobiography. Bruce's analysis of the incident is very funny indeed, and a fabulous hook into this very personal book.
The book's subtitle is A man. A game. A life. A shambles, and it really is. In the beautifully structured prose of a journalist, Bruce describes his childhood, moulded into a mass of angst by circumstance, a child with zero self-confidence, an alcoholic father and a self-loathing that increases as the years pass. Greg does not like himself and the way in which he presents means that, for a while at least, we don't like him much either. His mental health journey is a deep portrait of one man's psyche and he really lays it bare. It's brave and raw, and sends you googling to see if he's really as ugly as he thinks he is (he's not).
The passages relating incidents from the rugby world, Bruce's Monday-morning phone calls to a gruff Steve Hansen whilst a sports journalist, and the relationship between idolising men who succeed at rugby and men (or one man, himself) who fail at everything is an anxious oval ball of memoir. It's appealing for its immersion in New Zealand rugby and the wit and honesty with which very personal truths are told. A riveting read.
