‘We could drift out into the North Sea…’

Tap and Go catches up with Bristol captain Matt Salter, who along with nine current and former team-mates, is preparing for a rather unique post-season fund-raising challenge.

Hi Matt… Tap and Go doesn’t normally do shameless plugs until further down the interview but we’re genuinely interested in the Bristol Rugby Fjord Kayak Challenge. Tell us more.

We’re going to the second-longest fjord in the world – the Sogenfjord in Norway - and it is roughly 250 kilometres long. We’re planning to kayak the length of it from the inland town of Gudvangen to the point where it meets the North Sea and we want to do it in five days.
There is a group of ten of us flying out on the Sunday after our last game of the season. We get a briefing session on the Monday and then will spend five days kayaking down the fjord.
We’re doing it to raise money and awareness for the PRA Benevolent Fund and PROPS, a charity helping disabled children in the Bristol area.

Your team includes Roy Winters, Rob Higgitt, Joe El-Abd, Tom Arscott, Luke Arscott, Haydn Thomas, Greg Barden, Anthony Elliott and Ed Barnes. Any of those guys you’re not particularly looking forward to spending five days in a kayak with?

I’m not sure – I think we’ll find out a few things about each other. We’ll swap a few boys around during the course of the challenge. The Arscott brothers should be interesting – they’re a couple of young lads who put their hands up to do this.
We did have Darren Crompton on board but no one particularly wanted to tow him. Unfortunately, he had to drop out and we weren’t sure if he would actually fit in the canoe anyway. There are a few boys I’m slightly nervous about but I’m sure we’ll be all right.

Have you had time to do any training or are you just concentrating on your rugby?

We might be a bit naïve here but we thought we would just do it on a wing and a prayer and see what happens. The guys in Norway seem to think that if we’re reasonably fit it might be a bit painful but we should get through it.
I think it will be a bit of a test as rugby is only 80 minutes and this is going to be ten hours of canoeing each day. Fingers crossed we should be able to achieve our goal.

A group of rugby players trapped in a kayak for five days… sounds like a recipe for dirty songs and dirty jokes, right?

Yeah, especially when you consider we’re camping out every night. We’ve got to take our own food and cook it ourselves so it will bring out the boy scout in a few of us. But there could be some fun and games as well.
I’m sure the first day will see a few guys tipped in the water and after they realise it’s freezing cold, they’ll calm down a bit. Initially, it will be good fun and then we’ll settle down into a routine.

Tap and Go suspects such tom-foolery will be fine and dandy providing it doesn’t make you go backwards and add more miles to the challenge?

Exactly. We don’t want to zig-zag too much. I’m worried about a few of the boys. We went out in the Bristol docks earlier this week and Joe El-Abd fell in the water, which was quite funny. Half the boys went 200 metres one way and then zig-zagged 200 metres in the other direction, which was slightly worrying.

This is not your first attempt at an adventurous challenge, right?

We planned the Three Peaks Challenge late in the season last year. It was an off-the-cuff thing really because we were in the playoffs and weren’t sure exactly when we were going to finish.
We left on the Tuesday after our last game and drove up to Scotland that day. We slept in a hostel that night and then started the next afternoon. We did Ben Nevis on the first day and then did Scafell Pike that night and finished off with Snowdon.
But we lost quite a bit of time driving. Our kitman was doing the driving and his navigation system didn’t work too well.

Sounds a bit like your kayaking.

Fortunately, he’s not coming with us so we should be all right. His driving wasn’t particularly great but we managed to get it done with about 55 minutes to spare. It was a lot more difficult than we actually thought.
We take on these things thinking we’re fit enough as rugby players but we tend to use different muscles and it was actually quite hard work. But it was enjoyable and we got a taste for it so we decided to take on something more large scale having a bit more time to plan it.

This is a good team-building exercise, right?

It takes you out of that environment where you’re training for a game every week and then doing your own thing in your free time. It’s going to be nice to camp out and find out a bit more about each other.
It’s easy enough training for an hour or two each day, but when you’ve got to dig in for five days and get taken out of your comfort zone, and the food is not there and you have to cook it yourself and camp out in the wet, it creates a bit of camaraderie and separates the men from the boys.

Let’s look at Bristol’s season… Would it be fair to say it has not gone as planned?

In all honesty, we over-achieved last season and exceeded all expectations, including our own. Our points difference was only eight points at the end of last season but we finished third. We won 99 per cent of those tight games.
This year has been difficult and we’ve been in a bit of transition. We’re not happy at where we’ve ended up because we would have liked to have qualified for Europe again. But it’s been one of those years where things haven’t always gone our way and we’ve had to make the best of it.
We tried to compete in Europe and we took quite a few dents in the six pool games in the Heineken Cup. That didn’t help us in the league and we also haven’t played as well as we should have done. I think this is the start of a couple of difficult years as we move out of the Memorial Stadium. We’ve got to work really hard at Bristol in order to be competitive and make sure we make small improvements each year.

Have you got any nicknames?

Erm, yeah (lengthy pause).

Printable ones?

I can tell you my nickname but I can’t tell you why. It’s Squid-Wood.

Tap and Go is almost afraid to ask

Yeah, I wouldn’t ask if I were you. But the boys will find it funny that you have printed it.

This may still be to come when you are in the kayak, but what’s the best dressing room prank you have witnessed?

There was a great one the other week. Brian O’Riordan is quite a tidy, clean fella and he likes his kitbag to be packed properly and filled with nice clean towels and his clothes. Darren Crompton tends to nick his towel every time he is in the showers.
So Brian bought a padlock for his bag and off he went into the showers thinking he was safe. Darren and Sam Cox broke open his padlock and decided to a double chainsaw with his towel. You can imagine what a double chainsaw involves – one front and one back – and they got a picture taken on their mobile phones and then put the towel back in his bag.
When Brian had finished drying and had gone for lunch, they texted the picture to him. He opened up a picture of the guys naked and doing a double chainsaw with his towel. Brian wasn’t very pleased.
I’m not sure how you’re going to write that one but it was a good prank.

If you could have three fantasy dinner guests who would they be and why?

Fidel Castro would be kind of interesting and he might bring some rum and cigars. Ranulph Fiennes is pretty interesting and he had his fingers chopped off by a surgeon in Bristol who does our hands so I’d be keen to speak with him about that. And Jeremy Clarkson.

If Tap and Go was buying you a post-match drink, what would it be?

It would have to be a pint of Exhibition which is the local cider down here.

Who are your favourite rugby players of all-time?

I quite liked Dean Richards. And I never watched him play much but I always liked Jean-Pierre Rives because I cut out a famous picture of him covered in blood while playing for France.

Thanks Matt. Good luck with the challenge and Tap and Go guesses this is one of those things you’ll be telling people not to try at home.

I think we did that with the Three Peaks. It was quite funny because the boys couldn’t walk for about three days afterwards. That’s why we’re trying to get this one done early so we can go away and relax for a bit over the summer.

Are you confident you’ll be back in time for preseason training?

It depends if we carry on going – we spoke to the guys over in Norway and they said if we don’t stop at the end we could drift out into the North Sea and all the way home to England. We don’t really want to do that.
It’s going to be interesting to take the boys out of their comfort zone. We’re taking a camera with us to put together a montage for the PRA dinner. I’m sure we’ll have quite a laugh with that and there’ll be a few bare arses about.

No double chainsaw action though, we hope

No, just the person who raises the least amount of money is going to get stripped and get his arse whacked by an oar by the rest of the team.

To support the Bristol Rugby Fjord Kayak Challenge visit www.justgiving.com/bristolrugbykayak2008