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Page 1 of 6 As the Chinese celebrate the Year of the Nomads Hat, it’s perfectly apt to recall the beginnings of the Manila Tens, now celebrating its twentieth anniversary, and the introduction of the Nomads Rugby Section to the format. Nomads Rugby Team - 1984
(L-R): David Reynolds, Tony Berridge, Mike Crago, Steve Barker, Peter Sloane, Lionel Baugh, Tony Philpott, Bill Smyth, Graeme Monroe, Steve Bradley.
(L-R): Mick Yaxley, Tim Davis, David Hodges, Phil Crotty (Capt), Jim Bell, Peter Beynon, Trevor Briggs.
In essence the tournament started due to a directive from the new Nomads President of the time, one Oberlieutenant Albert Robert, who decreed that all sections should put on a special event in 1989 to honour Nomads’ 75th anniversary.
Now this should have been a pretty simple task, but of course, as with all things Nomads, it was not.
As I had captained the side since 1986, the ball was put in my court, but what would that special event be? We already had a sevens tournament running since 1976, The Toby Kent Sevens.
The Toby Kent SevensToby played centre for Nomads and had worked at ADB until a tragic accident at their offices on Roxas Boulevard had taken his life in 1975. So the story goes, he was reading a newspaper while waiting for the elevator, and as the doors opened he walked into the shaft but not the lift.
Now while sevens play is fantastic to watch when played by internationals & those who’d not taken alcohol for a year, for the Nomads’ species it was not a spectator sport. Playing in the heat around Chinese New Year and on a pitch that had yet to enjoy irrigation, the tournament could only attract one overseas team. With the greatest respect to Mr. Kent & his mother, who had stopped replying to the annual tournament reports, its days were numbered.
Despite the fact that we’d played in a tens tournament every year since 1985, tens was not the only choice on the list. Having been invited to play with the newly-formed Rhino’s rugby team in 1988, which included a group of ex-Nomads now playing elsewhere in Asia, it had been suggested that a match be played between the current team and the “old.”
The only way that the old boys were going to get a side together was to play the weekend before the Hong Kong Sevens, when not only the Asian based players would be up for it but also those travelling from further afield, Europe and the USA.
So the date was set and this became key. When the proposed old boys’ skipper, one Gary “Baby Whale” Crist, then based in Guam had his doubts about getting a full team together we realized a fifteen-a-side fixture was a non-starter, but they might be able to get ten.
It has to be said at this time that even getting the current Nomads fifteen together was no easy task. These were uncivilized times before email and, in the case of the Philippines, a proper working telephone system. Captains of the day earned their salt. No flicking off a mail to all and sundry with one click and “hey presto” the word was out.
Informing 15 players care of PLDT could take all week and several hundred engaged tones. How well I remember my first phone with a redial facility. Pure bliss. Add in memory and speakerphone, orgasms all round.
The political situation in the country since Ninoy Aquino had been brutally assassinated at the airport in 1983 had sent foreign firms and, more importantly, their rugby playing employees packing. The People Power revolution in 1986 was welcomed all round but the continual coupe attempts on Cory Aquino, the country’s first female President made the local situation very unstable.
Given the situation, ten-a-side rugby had become a very appropriate proposition and the Nomads had some experience of it. In 1985 we were invited to our first tens tournament, the Combined Old Boys Rugby Association (COBRA) Tens in Kuala Lumpur.
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