sports time lads

okay submariners i'm joining sub training this year and have just taken up boxing this month, hows the sports opportunities whilst being on subs (i know militaryforums.co.uk got a bit boring with people asking q's before joining but i thought we'd get some victory stories going here) whats been your experience with sports in the submarine fleet? and any boxers among you i'm looking for inspiration for a sport i've always enjoyed but never taken up, cheers lads 8)

 

Mongo, first and foremost its Submarines, Subs are some sort of filled roll, the two shouldn't be confused.
Things may have change since my DE days but there was never room on a boat for a boxing ring and on the patrol boats little time in harbour. I suspect the same is true today although with the crewing system on Bombers there must be longer periods ashore at times, no doubt a more up to date Submariner can better advise you

 

What boat you joining?

 

'Course, if you're going on a Bomber, you should be OK for some snooker.

Otherwise, the only 'sports' we had was on various visits around the UK and some idiot would arrange a footy or egg-chasing match with the Crabfats or some other blokes who had nothing better to do than play sport every day.
We'd always lose heavily, but we'd get our own back at the post-match P.U.

 

Plenty of time to train on a bomber on patrol, and they have loads of equipment to do it onboard, running machine, exercise bikes,rowing machines, weights, punch bags and the support crew/ off crew time you can do it all in the looooovely place called Faslane!

 

Geoff

How true, some bright spark arranged a footy match against the Portugese Navy in Lisbon. Its 1967 and World Cup pride/shame still exists dependant if you are Jock or not.

Crew 66, team 11 no probs. Heavy night in Texas Bar board bus with team about 20 supporters and few crates of beer. Reach local navy base who's team is all PTI types. By half time its Portugese: Double figures RN: Nil. OK lets alter rules.

1. The three forward from the first half change from Portugese side to Brits
2. The Brits can change a player at any time with no recourse to the officials. Ice hockey style
3. The Brits can only have 15 players on the pitch at any given time
4. Steaming bats are football boots.
5. The first half score was null and void
6. Only the goal keeper was allowed to smoke on the pitch
7. The Brits Goal keeper was interchangeable between players on the pitch at any time.

We still lost but the score was more in the 5 - 1 area.

The locals thought it was good fun and all retired later that day to the Texas Bar.

Appy Daze

Nutty

 

Couple of 'away' matches when I was on Cachalot.....

A visit to Workington (titter ye not, young matelots, it's a good run!). Somebody managed to arrange a football match against the local club. Now Workington FC (the football team) has alrady gone out of business at that time, so whoever our Visit Liaison Officer was (a twit), had arranged what he thought would be the nearest thing - a game against Workington RLFC - the 13-a-side Rugby League club! Anyway, we rustled up 11 fairly sober players and turned up for a game of footy - though the opposition weren't having any of that and played us by their rules! We lasted until all of us had been flattened and jumped on by 13 great big hairy Cumbrian brutes - perhaps about 15 minutes - and then unwisely tried to play by their rules. Several concussions, a few missing teeth, and some severely twisted scrota later we had to give up entirely and retire to the bar, where I'm afraid they even beat us at that. :lol:

Another one in Tangier - why on earth would the local "American School" want to play football against us? They were all about 16, ran around like gazelles and got us dizzy. We did our best to slow them down a bit - if you saw either version of the "Mean Machine" you know what I mean. Narrowly avoiding a diplomatic 'incident', we disappeared back into the hotels/bars we'd been flushed out of and continued our run ashore. :?

Another one - a visit to Barry Island. Match against RAF St Athan. Think we lost about 12 - 0, but had our own sods' opera afterwards and embarrassed the crabfats so much they left their lady crabfats in the bar for us to impress and so we did!

Oh my word - all this talk of Navy footy reminds me of the floodlit matches played in HMS Terror, Singapore..... Brilliant!!! I remember Albion v Hermes, (1968?) while two huge ships companies took over the Armada club - must have been about 3000 there! (the man with the peanuts ran out of stock a bit early) :wink:

 

Ello Jeff
that dit about the Terror and the footers reminded me about the bar in the fleet canteen in the dockyard ,the barstaff used to line up the pint pots and
fill them with a hose at opening time
Non of yer spillage pulling pints and the bar serving time was the fastest
I've ever seen.


the tables and chairs were concrete so it was ok doin sods opera dits and they were too heavy for throwing around during various differences of opinions between crews .

Happy days