Just after 1.30pm on Wednesday, Andy Ripley leant forward and said: “I spend a lot of time these days talking about my genitals. It’s wonderful.” He paused, partly for effect and partly to survey the rabbit stew that was steaming gently in front of him in a restaurant in Kent.
Ripley can get away with such an arresting statement because it is true. On June 24, 2005 he was told six words that would change his life, perhaps end it. “It’s unequivocal. You have prostate cancer.” Since then and particularly since the publication last year of Ripley’s World, a diary about his battle against this disease, he has become as much of an expert on it as any layman.
He proselytises for prostate cancer. “I’m there or I’m dead,” he replied to one invitation to speak about it at a conference. On such occasions he has no notes; it comes straight from his heart. Those who hear him experience awe and humility. At a rugby dinner in London recently, grown men were crying - and when they weren’t, they were laughing. Ripley received and deserved a standing ovation.
Few people in such situations would described themselves as lucky. Lucky is a word that could have been applied to Ripley at any time during the first 57 years of his life. He was the comprehensive schoolboy who won 24 caps for England, became world indoor rowing champion for his age group and came close to getting a rowing Blue at Cambridge when he was 50. It is not a word you expect to hear from someone who just has been told he has cancer and knows that both his wife’s parents died from the disease.
“I was so lucky,” Ripley says now. “Perhaps 500 people each day are told they have cancer and, of those, 180 have lung cancer, 120 have breast cancer and 200 have prostate cancer, which offers the best chance of survival. I am so lucky.
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“I have only come off my motorbike twice. The first time when I was kid, the second time when I was riding back from the Royal Marsden on July 8, 2005.”
A lady driver whose first name he later discovers is Comfort, pulled out without seeing him. “I bounce along the road,” he said. “I am thinking, ‘Am I going to get internal bleeding in my head.’ But people come and help me. I am not bleeding, at least not externally. I am lucky.
“My life is a blank sheet of paper. I am lucky because I am all right financially. I have five non-executive directorships. I used to be chairman of the Modern Pentathlon Association of Great Britain. I am president of Tideway Scullers. I am a non-executive director of the Children with Aids charity. If because of the NHS, my life was saved, I want to do something in return.”
Now he is hunched up in the front seat of a car. He has just walked down the four stone steps at the front of his house, carefully placing his feet sideways on each step. He will shortly descend the stairs of the restaurant backwards. “Knees,” he explained. “They’re shot from rugby. Arthritis in both of them. I’m lucky I can still use them.”
The arc of Ripley’s life coincides with contemporary sport tomorrow when England play Wales at Twickenham, a reminder of the game in which he won his first cap for England. It was the first Five Nations game in 1972 and J.P.R. Williams touched down for the winning score for Wales.
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Dates trip off Ripley’s tongue. “My first game for Rosslyn Park first XV was on December 6, 1969 against Richmond and my last on April 23, 1989 v Cardiff,” he said. “We lost both, quite comfortably.” He laughed. “I had a lot of fun in between,” he added. “I am indebted to rugby for what it gave me. I am so lucky.”
In the old days, Ripley’s worries centred on remembering the latest lineout calls and the second verse of Inky Pinky Parlez Vous. Now, his world is full of initials: PSA, IMRT, DRE, INR, ECG, BPH, MRI. These acronyms are the lingua franca of cancer sufferers. At times, Ripley sounds like a scientist at CERN, in Geneva.
There is not an ounce of “old fartism” about him. He went with former colleagues to Twickenham two years ago and had a great time. “We whinged about the sandwiches turning up at the corners,” he said. “We said the car park was crap, the pitch was nothing like it was when we played, they don’t scrummage now as we had to. It was a wonderful day.”
As always, though, humour is his weapon. He genuinely believes that his was a special time in rugby but that today’s players are better than he was, the game is enjoyable to watch, that rugby, for all its stylistic manoeuvres brought in from rugby league, is OK.
“I sympathise with today’s players,” he said. “They’re marionettes and I feel sorry for them. Someone says to them: ‘Take this, you’ll grow bigger or run faster and they do.’ I took dope at university. Didn’t everyone? I was at the University of East Anglia in the Sixties. But this ... (touching the red wine) this is better.”
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Only once does any hint of self-pity creep in. He looks at the menu and chooses a gooey pudding, saying, “I’ve trained today. I’ve done a half-hour on the erg [ergometer].” Then he adds, slightly more quietly: “Since this might be our last supper together, we’d better go for it. Can I please have a glass of the Brown Bros pudding wine?” The most cold-hearted person in the world could not have said no.
Coach’s inside knowledge a danger to England
Andy Ripley believes that Shaun Edwards, the London Wasps head coach, who is Wales’s part-time defence coach, faces two particularly difficult areas of interest as he tries to help Wales to win at Twickenham for the first time since 1988. “Shaun is a great guy, a great coach, loved by those he coaches,” Ripley said. “But I would love to know what he will tell Wales to do about Phil Vickery. Phil is edgy at the moment, probably because the pounding his back has taken leaves him vulnerable. I think Edwards will encourage Wales to attack Vickery.
“More interesting is what Shaun tells Wales about Danny Cipriani, who will surely come on at some time. Danny is a great talent and I think Shaun sees a bit of himself in Danny. He has been Danny’s mentor. How much can he bring himself to tell Wales about his prot?g??”