Still a force at 40

The aches and pains last a little while longer than they used to. There’s a slight limp now and then. The knees are starting to creak a bit.

Getting out of bed Sunday mornings takes a bit longer, even when there’s three boys — ages three to six — rarin’ to go.

Rod Snow’s 40 now. For the rock on this Rock, Father Time has arrived, at home and on the turf.

Today might offer another milestone for an athlete decorated like no other Newfoundlander, one with four World Cup of Rugby appearances, 61 international caps — 62 had he not informed Rugby Canada he was unavailable for the Canadian Selects in the American Rugby Championship in Argentina — and a bunch of years spent as a professional in a place where rugby, it is not a stretch to suggest, is placed above church and state.

As far as name recognition goes, Rod Snow is known to most Newfoundlanders — on this end of the island, anyway — as the guy playing the game still somewhat foreign to the casual sports fan.

He’s also the guy with the big legs. And barrel chest. A Chevrolet — no, check that, a Chevy half-ton pickup — in cleats.

A 268-pound deep freeze.

“If granite blocks were stacked and turned into human form, Snow would likely be the end product,” a BBC reporter once said.

Today, Snow and The Rock go for a national championship, a 3:30 p.m. date with the Prairie Wolf Pack standing between the Newfoundland/Atlantic side and the Canadian Rugby Championship title, another stroke in Pat Parfrey’s grand plan to take over the world.

Snow may be the elder statesman on The Rock, but don’t for a minute foolishly think the product of Labrador City, via Mount Pearl, is merely along for the ride.

Not a chance.

“Is this my last game?” he asked rhetorically. “It could be. I have no interest in hanging around if I can’t contribute.

“But I’m not there yet.”

For all he’s done in the sport — Parfrey maintains he’s still the best scrummaging prop in Canada — Snow acknowledges he’s not a natural athlete.

Rather, for all he’s done in the game, for all he’s accomplished, for 11 years as a pro in South Africa and later Wales, which no doubt gave him and his family a nice start in life, he’s worked like a dog.

“I got involved in strength and conditioning at 13 or 14 because I wanted to be successful,” he said.

“I went by the understanding that if you were the strongest, fastest and fittest player at a tryout camp, it would be very hard for the coach not to select you.”

For years, Snow sculpted his body. As a minor soccer player. Later as a junior hockey player, when he would speed around the ice, a heat-seeking missile in a Mount Pearl Blades uniform. And as a 25-year-old rookie in the South African professional league following his first World Cup (not an especially great memory — “Very political. All the stuff you heard and read about South Africa applied in the rugby world.”)

He’s always been a workout fiend.

The result is a 20” neck, and 30-something-inch legs, the pistons that churn in the scrums, driving back the opposition.

Doug Grant, the former NHL goaltender from Corner Brook, once told me he worked out like crazy during the off-season, running the hills in and around Corner Brook.

The idea was, he said, that while there would be better goaltenders at the Detroit Red Wings’ training camp, none would be in better shape than Grant.

“I feel it in the joints now on the morning after games, the knee issues a couple of days afterwards. It’s the wear and tear catching up.” - Rod Snow

In Wales, where Snow reached icon status, it wouldn’t be uncommon for him to cross-train at 8 a.m. (boxing, heavy bag work, etc.), have a two-hour rugby session from 10 a.m. to noon and then go for another 60-minute weights/aerobic workout in the afternoon.

Call it homework for game day, and the 80-plus minutes of punishment with 6’4” and 6’5”, 280- and 290-pound men that ensued.

“What people don’t realize is Saturday (game day) should be your hardest day,” he said. “In order to accommodate that, I had to find a way to put more stress and strain on the body through the week.

“I knew that no matter how hard I worked Saturday, I had worked just as hard or harder during the week.

“Plus the fact I hated losing. I

didn’t mind losing a game, so much, but I hated losing to the other guy, hated walking off the field knowing he won the battle that day. It happened ... a lot. But I hated it.”

His level of fitness, foot speed and willingness to barrel down the field with the ball was somewhat of an anomaly among props.

Even today, at 40, Snow still pushes his body. Rare does a day go by without some sort of workout (though chasing three boys under six, it would seem, is enough to work up a sweat). But no matter how much time he punches in, he also knows there is no beating age to the touchline.

No matter how hard he’ll try, at some point a 25-year-old will get the better of the 40-year-old.

“Am I the same type of player? Absolutely not,” he says.

Rather, Snow’s learned to pick his battles. An 80-minute player in his heyday, Snow’s playing time is now to 40 or 50 minutes a game.

“I used to be involved in every facet of the game,” he said. “Now I pick and choose where to work and where to rest.”

Amazingly, he’s remained relatively injury-free through his career, the most serious being a few concussions, although there were seven arthroscopic procedures on his knees over the years.

“I feel it in the joints now on the morning after games, the knee issues a couple of days afterwards,” he said.

“It’s the wear and tear catching up.”

­For everything he’s done in rugby, which will eventually lead him to the provincial Sports Hall of Fame, for all the appearances at the World Cup — among global sports’ grandest stages with the Olympic Games and the World Cup of Soccer — one of Snow’s fondest memories was the brilliant August afternoon in Regina, Sask., when The Rock won its first national championship five years ago.

It was a feeling of joy and satisfaction — joy arising from the fact little ol’ Newfoundland, a relative rugby neophyte, had elevated to the top of the sport within Canada, and satisfaction in the knowledge that he had helped the team in its ascension.

Since then, Snow has also come to realize he’s no longer the on-field leader, so to speak, on a team that’s gotten younger, a team that’s seen other leaders emerge.

“I’m 40, and the game makes extreme demands on the body,” he said.  “But to stop and go off into the sunset, I’m not sure if I’m there yet.”

Robin Short is The Telegram’s Sports Editor. He can be reached by e-mail at rshort@thetelegram.com.