18th Matthew Dinning Cup another success for F.E. Madill rugby

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

For one day each year, the athletic field at Wingham’s F.E. Madill Secondary School becomes a proving ground for rough-and-tumble students looking to sharpen their rugby skills. This year, the Matthew Dinning Memorial Rugby Tournament’s 18th edition was held under blue skies and bright sunlight - one of the first truly spring-like days of the season. 

 

This year’s tournament was held on April 23, exactly 20 years, plus a single day, since Corporal Matthew Dinning, a former F.E. Madill student, was killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb.  

 

As he does each year, after the last match was played and the champions declared, Lincoln Dinning stood before the gathered teams and spoke briefly about his son - a brave boy who became a brave man, all too briefly. Lincoln’s words are almost always the same - by now, those words should be worn as smooth as river stones by passing time, but time alone can never blunt the sharp edge of the essential message he seeks to impart to each year’s boys. “It was 20 years ago, yesterday, that my son Matthew was killed in Afghanistan,” he said matter of factly. “He was 23 years old. He was hit by a roadside bomb while serving his country over there. He used to go to this school. He used to play rugby and run up and down this very field. So, thank you for keeping his memory alive.”

 

Lincoln’s annual speech, given in memory of his son, also serves as a warning. Rugby has often been described as a “war game” - a contest of territory, strategy and force born from the excess exuberance of young men eager to test their limits in the early 1800s. Since those early days, the rules of rugby have actually changed very little. But in that same stretch of time, the rules of war have transformed into something completely different. Modern warfare bears little resemblance to rugby, or to the battlefields of old. In rugby, courage can still carry the day. In the wars of today, courage guarantees nothing. A roadside bomb has no consideration of bravery, no interest in fairness, no understanding of what is lost when a community loses its youth.

 

The young men who take the field each spring cannot yet imagine how long time truly is. To them, old age is a distant, almost impossible concept. More impossible still is the notion that some lives end long before they should.
In honouring Matthew, the tournament asks each new generation of players to reflect on what it means to stand beside one another, to trust one another and to fight - whether for ground on the pitch or for the lofty principles that lay just beyond it.