Bill Turpin was talking about the early days of the Langley Rugby Club (LRC) when the buns began flying.
It was kind of a tradition at rugby dinners when the audience decides a speaker has gone on long enough, explained Turpin, the founder of the club.
He was speaking to 350 current and former club members and supporters attending a gala dinner to mark the 50th anniversary of LRC.
An amused Turpin kept talking.
“I had such a hard time cutting it [the speech] down to what I had,” he said.
“If I don’t say these things, they’ll never know about these characters.”
People like New Zealander Colin Stewart, whose middle name, literally, was “rugby” and came from a long line of players.
Or Byron Kemp, who Turpin recalled contacting after he learned Kemp, a founding member of the Vancouver Red Lions, rugby club, had moved to the Langley area.
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In the early days of the club, he said Stewart and Kemp were among the people who poured their heart and soul into the club.
There was, Turpin said, no resistance to the idea of a Langley rugby club when it was first proposed.
“Everyone was keen,” he recalled.
At the time, Turpin was living in Aldergrove and teaching.
He devoted 17 years to the club as president, coach, player and team captain before he moved to Vancouver, but never completely severed his ties with the club.
He is pleased to see how the club has grown and proud that the people who ran it after him turned LRC into one of the very few clubs that owns its own playing field and clubhouse.
Turpin was lured off stage when club president Brian Anderson and vice president Stu Morrison offered platters of beer.
Nine of the original 15 LRC players attended the June 1 event at the Coast Hotel and Convention Centre.
Ten former players came all the way from New Zealand to attend.
Rugby star and former Team Canada captain Glenn Ennis was a featured speaker.
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Email: dan.ferguson@langleyadvancetimes.com
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