Hell-bent for leather on a moonlit night

With World Rugby Cup fever now in its florid stage, we have been celebrating at Riddled in our own contrarian way by organising a scratch team of Old Entomologist regulars and topers for a game of Real (or Royal) Rugby against the losers from the Sensitive Frog down the road.

As any fule kno, the Royal game predates today's popular sport by several hundred years. It began in 1585 when the Edicarian expeditionary force arrived at Earth with the intention of enslaving Earthlings and forcing them to manufacture the numbered arrows that are the mainstay of Edicarian technology. Disdainful of Earth's capability to resist, they sent a single ship, which touched down near the Tower of London during the disembowelling and execution of Sir Ffrancis Ffolkes for Lese majesty and excessive use of 'f's; the ship was mistaken for one of Sir Ffolkes' internal organs by the excited mob, and disabled during the subsequent brawl for its possession.

Some say that the alien visitors were actually well-intended, and that the whole contre-temps could have been avoided if every member of the population had been provided with a basic anatomical education.

Anyway, in the modern version of the game, a couple of Library Pixies fill the role of the ship's crew. They claim to enjoy it, even without furniture, and live-blog the whole experience. They really are rather strange. You will notice that they have provisioned themselves with miniature kegs of 'Malone' and 'Malloy', two of our Celebratory Beckett Beers (the Godot is still in the maturation tank), and an air-freshening unit at lower right to cope with the subsequent farting.

The rules of Real Rugby do tend to go on a bit...

... so here's the Flanker rule explained graphically, with the ever-helpful Figures 2a and 2b:


I hope that makes everything clear.