Will Greenwood: sobering lessons for East End boys in School of Hard Knocks

By Will Greenwood Published: 5:42PM GMT 03 March 2010

Staging posts: Scott Quinnell (back row, centre left) and Will Greenwood with their fledgling organisation from School of Hard Knocks Photo: BSKYB

A small, immature man who once came to precision with outlines on his neck from where someone had attempted to suppress him, Paulius was not worried.

For him, precision beaten was a travel in the fool around ground compared to flourishing on the streets. I should have seen it coming. His pack bag regularly contained a four-pack of beer, and he pronounced he indispensable to splash to sleep.

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But when you are traffic with twenty-five lads from London"s East End, a drink complaint is the slightest of your worries.

That"s what creates the School of Hard Knocks 2010 such a challenge. After the success of 2009, when we incited a garland of uneasy Welsh kids in to a rugby team, we thought we would try to repeat the routine in one of London"s majority revengeful areas.

Where Wales was all about internal lads, this time spin we got youngsters from as far afield as Portugal, eastern Europe and Africa. They had problems and issues that I can"t even proceed to residence in this article.

Still, at the core of what we were you do was the idea that rugby could shift lives. We had the work cut out. The organisation contained the sequence unemployed, unreasoning offenders, drug users, the without a country and the very, really angry.

From the initial day there were problems. We roughly had a full-scale demonstration seconds after the finish of precision on day one. Two phones had left missing. There were accusations everywhere, all the boys in a room.

One child pronounced his bag would be searched over his passed body. I have used that word in jokingly down the years. That day, I thought it would happen.

There were trips to the hospital. There were the common claims of bravery on and off the pitch. There was lateness and there was excuses, swearing, fool around and threats.

But afterwards there were honestly relocating moments, such as when they met Mark Prince, father of the murdered immature Queens Park Rangers footballer, Kiyan.

This is a man who has seen what the travel and knives can do in all the horror. He has watched doctors open the chest of his son, massaging his heart with their hands as they attempted to siphon hold up behind in to his failing body.

He is someone who has walked the dim side, who outlayed the initial couple of hours after his son"s genocide pciking up the names of the people who had finished the deed.

He is a man who speaks plainly of how he was ready to expect revenge, an eye for an eye, on the initial chairman who non-stop the front doorway at the residence of the people he blamed.

But he is additionally someone who found the energy to spin afar from this trail of dump and death. Helped in piece by faith, in piece by an bargain that he had alternative immature kids to yield for, he done the right choice. We longed for the organisation to see the man that Mark had become.

We longed for them to assimilate that they always, no make a difference what happens, have a choice. So we took them to the Repton Boys Club, where he could learn them the fortify that is compulsory to spin a immature boxer, flitting on the believe he gleaned as a veteran fighter.

In his 40s, still in implausible shape, Mark punished the lads with his fighting training. When he spoke, you could listen to a pin drop. This was a man from their parts, someone who has suffered but who was on the trail to redemption. And how this immature organisation of men would have followed him, right there and then, if usually the trail had been a verbatim one. But hold up is never that easy.

Another day we attempted to show them that the police, the men in unvaried they hated so much, were additionally human. So we took them to Gravesend, to outlay time at the Met Police"s demonstration precision centre.

At initial the bricks and firebombs had the guys sprinting in each citation but forward, that is what the military have to do. Slowly the carry out and the fortify came, and they walked as one by abandon and uncontrolled in to the hurled masonry.

It all helped spin them in to a team, and it meant that they astounded us in the initial warm-up compare by essentially winning it. Mikey in the centre was innate to fool around at a higher level.

Derek at loosehead column had never played rugby before, but did a endurable sense of Gethin Jenkins. If usually this child had played a little rugby as a youngster, we would have a star on the hands.

Kwesi, the inconstant wing, has the gait any self-respecting Premiership wing needs. There"s a bit of aggro and audacity about him as well.

He is a classical School of Hard Knocks child so most talent, articulate, attractive but in conclusion far as well peaceful to take an easy choice and censure life"s vicious cards rather than swindle for success.

You find yourself veering in between wanting to flog him up the backside and give him a hug. Still, five tries in dual games tells you all you need to know.

On the side we had Rodall from the DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo, and I don"t think I have come opposite a improved athlete, in conditions of endurance, on a rugby field.

He would spin up late, had singular English, no physique fat and 0 bargain of rugby. One session, I motionless to put the organisation by an old England fitness test. It"s tough, attack the rug and sprinting, and lasts about eight minutes.

Rodall set off, and my jaw line dropped. He came in to the home spin 10 seconds forward of any man I have known. Not happy to seashore in, he flick-flacked the finish and landed ideally with a grin and a Usain Bolt arm-raise. I couldn"t speak.

When we told them they had to do it again given of a prior punishment, he steady the feat. You could see the organisation flourishing in confidence.

After the initial win, we set up a second compare opposite Barking RFC, the home of Jason Leonard. They got a kicking but dug in, and we learnt some-more about them in that compare than we had in the prior eight weeks. And so to the last game, opposite an call in XV of especially military officers at Eton Manor rugby club.

On the initial day of the programme, I conducted a amicable experiment. I asked the guys to cuddle each other. They were broke and did it fast to get it over with.

Come diversion day, I asked them to repeat the process. I was overwhelmed. In that becoming different room there was genuine love and affection. Without exception, they were ready to do conflict for each other. There was warmth, passion, loyalty and tears.

United by this funny sport, they had found most of the things that had been blank from their lives. They had overcome each hurdle, they had been harm and laughed together, and they had spin a team.

As they walked out on to the pitch, for the initial time given I had met them, I could see that they felt similar to winners.

School of Hard Knocks is shown at 10pm on Tuesdays on Sky Sports 1.