All-Time American List: Alec Parker
All-Time American List: Alec Parker
You can picture it now, the tall, bony frame cutting and baling hay on a farm in the mountains of Colorado, no phone, no email of course, and then he stops ... out in the distance a truck is coming, leaving a rooster tail of dust behind it.
The bony figure squints at the sun and does a little match in his head. Yup, it's probably that time again, and then he stabs his pitchfork in the ground. Or maybe he buries an ave in a stump, that's more poetic. the truck rolls up to the barn and out gets a guy with a foreign accent, a friend on the Aspen rugby team. "Alec," he says. "Mate, the Eagles have got a game."
That scenario is a bit romanticized, but it's not complete fiction. Alec Parker was pretty much that lone bony figure working on a farm, or on a horse, or cutting hay, until someone tracked him down and told him to grab his rugby boots. And more often than not that guy was his clubmate and USA teammate Mark Williams. And much, much more often than not, Park showed up, and brought everything to the rugby field.
A multiple national champion with Aspen, Parker was a superb Eagle lock. At 6-6 he had the height, but he also had the athleticism and desire that often saw him steal lineouts without being lifted—he just jumped really high. Capped over 50 times in a career that spanned 14 years, Parker brought grit, determination, and patience to the team. He wasn't going to be dragged into fights, but he could take a punch and a stomp and keep on coming. He played a pivotal role in the 2007 World Rugby Try of the Year, and appeared in three World Cups.
When he was done, he'd trudge back up to the farm and get back to work. He was no-nonsense, unimpressed with his own ability, and really just a simple western boy who loved to play rugby. He just did it really, really well.
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