What Goes on Tour Stays on Tour: Great Tales from My Rugby Travels

by Brian Moore

Have you ever wanted to know what really happens when teams go on tour? Drawing on his extensive experience of touring, former international and acclaimed pundit Brian Moore tells you all you need ever know, with this in-depth but light-hearted exposé, covering every level of the sport, from junior club rugby right up to the British Lions. With stories of bikini-clad forwards and Moore's own escapades, many of rugby's best-known names of recent years are featured, and no element of life on tour is left untouched. As they go, readers will learn how to survive the worst room-mates in the world, how to cope with the long hours of travel, and how to get the best room in the hotel. They will learn how the professionals do it - or at least used to - and how their would-be amateur counterparts try to do it; both having a blast along the way. Anyone who has ever gone away with a group of mates - male or female, sporting or not - will recognise similar situations and immediately identify with the book. Reading it will bring back their own memorable moments of touring or, if not, make them want to go on their first trip. To help readers get the best out of any tour, Moore provides top tips on how best to organise one, including tour rules, courts, songs and games. Along with the author's Top XV tourists of all time, this book is a definitive insight into touring in all its fun and glory.

289 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 6, 2014

About the author

Brian Moore (1921–1999) was born into a large, devoutly Catholic family in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was a surgeon and lecturer, and his mother had been a nurse. Moore left Ireland during World War II and in 1948 moved to Canada, where he worked for the Montreal Gazette, married his first wife, and began to write potboilers under various pen names, as he would continue to do throughout the 1950s.

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1955, now available as an NYRB Classic), said to have been rejected by a dozen publishers, was the first book Moore published under his own name, and it was followed by nineteen subsequent novels written in a broad range of modes and styles, from the realistic to the historical to the quasi-fantastical, including The Luck of Ginger Coffey, An Answer from Limbo, The Emperor of Ice Cream, I Am Mary Dunne, Catholics, Black Robe, and The Statement. Three novels—Lies of Silence, The Colour of Blood, and The Magician’s Wife—were short-listed for the Booker Prize, and The Great Victorian Collection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

After adapting The Luck of Ginger Coffey for film in 1964, Moore moved to California to work on the script for Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. He remained in Malibu for the rest of his life, remarrying there and teaching at UCLA for some fifteen years. Shortly before his death, Moore wrote, “There are those stateless wanderers who, finding the larger world into which they have stumbled vast, varied and exciting, become confused in their loyalties and lose their sense of home. I am one of those wanderers.”

Reviews

[David Crespin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written account of his experiences touring the world through rugby and amusing insights into the rugby people he shared much of his life with.

[Mat Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fast paced memoir of life on the rugby road from one of the sport's more compelling and articulate characters. Plenty of laughs, eyebrow raising incidents and recommended for all fans of egg chasing.

[Philip Davies · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit boorish and long winded. Inclusion of rugby song lyrics and description of drinking games was just pointless padding.
Disappointing, as I really like Brian's journalistic offerings.

[Matt Atkinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some funny stories of his touring days but lacks an overall narrative.