Mark Bennett, Edinburgh Rugby
Edinburgh holds a special place in our hearts here at Aubin. We also have a penchant for a bit of rugby (if you hadn’t already guessed) So we thought it only right that we nip down the road from our George Street store and get down to the Hive Stadium at Scottish Gas Murrayfield to visit the team at Edinburgh Rugby.
Visiting the home of the Scottish Rugby Football Union is pretty special even on a weekday when the Tennents bars are all locked up. The Hive Stadium is nestled nicely just next to Scottish Gas Murrayfield. Edinburgh Rugby has over 150 years of playing heritage, so it only seems fitting that they are bedfellows with the daddy of all Scottish rugby stadiums. On the coldest day of the year so far, we headed out onto the pitch to meet player Mark Bennett.
Mark started playing at the tender age of 6. “When your dad helps set up the youth section at the local club you don’t really have much choice!”
“Me and my sister were dragged down to the club, and fell in love with the game after that, the rest is history!”
The family bond and camaraderie that forms within a rugby team is special. You go out in the park and knock lumps out of each other but as soon as the game is done, you’re all friends again. Until the next game. Dare we say there isn’t the glamour and glitz that usually revolves around our other national sport, football. The rugby guys just grit their teeth (gum shield optional) and get on with it. And that’s why we love it.
Up and down the country every weekend in the latter half of the year, teams battle it out for the glorious win, be it the Sunday leagues, club rugby or Internationals. The physicality of the sport is clear for all to see and the thought of being tackled by a body built like a ‘brick-shit house’ while you’re pelting it down the line to get that funny shaped ball across the line is not for the faint hearted.
Unfortunately, Mark is injured at the moment but should hopefully be returning to the game in the new year. The body is a marvellous machine and it’s amazing what it can take. We visited the team gym as we chatted with Mark and witnessed one of the younger players deep into a training session. The 18 year old 6ft 5’ player was pulling a truck with his head (well maybe not a truck, it wasn’t World Strongest Man though felt like it could have been, but it was most certainly a
mighty heavy weight! He wasn’t even flinching!)
Playing for your country in the sport that you love is something that only a limited number of very talented and committed individuals will experience. Mark is one of those number. He made his international debut for Scotland in 2014 against Argentina. His ‘pinch me’ moment as he had dreamt of this as a kid coming to Murrayfield with his parents. The atmosphere as a supporter at Murrayfield is very special. But imagine being on the flipside of that as a player, lining up as your national anthem is being sung back to you by over 60,000 people.
Even the team bus to the stadium is a hair standing up on the back of your neck moment. The streets of Edinburgh are lined with fans and the final bit of the journey into Scottish Gas Murrayfield is piped in (we nearly had a moment ourselves when Mark described this)
And finally, we couldn’t leave without a This Is Your Life Moment. We asked Mark to pick out his sporting highlights. His career is definitely not over, so there’s more to come no doubt. Mark won a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the inaugural year that rugby sevens was introduced playing for Great Britain. A true underdog story, nobody expected the guys to perform as they did.
He scored a try against Australia in the quarter finals of the 2015 World cup, we won’t talk about the final score but getting one past the Wallabies has got to be up there.
Playing for Edinburgh Rugby is a real privilege, the boys that are in the squad all work together, they’ve faced some adversity, but they fight through that as a team.
So, sports fans, the moral of this story is clear…. Start young, learn how to run fast, with a disturbing nonchalant attitude of no fear when being hit by a truck. If you fall down your pals on the pitch will pick you back up again.
That’s what family is for.
