On Sunday morning last, a 28-year-old prop, Jon Dawson, having borrowed a bicycle from a friend, left his room at St Edmund’s College and set out on a journey around Cambridge that has been happening for as long anyone can remember. Dawson is 6ft and over 18st, so it wasn’t easy for the bike, but there are traditions more sacred than the right of a two-wheel machine to an easy Sunday morning.

Even if he’s known to some as The Honey Monster, Dawson knows how to play rugby and is captain of the Cambridge team that plays Oxford in this Thursday’s Varsity match at Twickenham. So a week ago, on a foul Sunday morning, he biked through Cambridge centre, stopping at houses here and there, like a postman making his rounds.

At a house in Portugal Place, three young men waited for what Dawson would bring. In fact, Trevor Boynton, a No 8 from South Africa, Joe Wheeler, a flanker from Leicester, and Matt Crockett, a Welsh hooker, were getting slightly agitated. They had expected Dawson to leave St Edmund’s, bomb down Lady Margaret Road, make a left turn onto Madingley Road, then into Northampton Street, a right into Bridge Street, across the river and up to their place. From 9.30am, they were waiting.

The knock came soon after midday and the news was mixed. Boynton and Crockett had made the team, Wheeler would be on the bench. For Crockett, it was a special moment. Having graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, he is a qualified doctor and he agreed to do an MPhil at Cambridge partly because it would greatly help his medical career, but also because he wanted one last big day on a rugby field.

For an amateur player, there are few days bigger than the Varsity match at Twickenham and a crowd of 45,000 is expected to attend Thursday’s match. Although the 26-year-old Welshman will not retire, he will settle for a more social form of the game once this last rendezvous is out of the way. And, yes, he dreams of leaving by a grand exit, the door that says “winners”.

He tells you about his life and though he doesn’t say it, his story makes you wonder. Because he was once a boy at Brynteg Comprehensive in Bridgend, the same school that offered a roof and a playing field to JPR Williams and Rob Howley, and the young Crockett had a passion for the game. That wasn’t an accident, because his dad had played first-team rugby for Aberavon and Bridgend, and he was both a teacher and rugby coach at Brynteg Comp.

Crockett was the youngest of five and the one most likely to make it in rugby. He played for Wales Schools and thought how brilliant it would be to play the game for a living. That was at 17, but by the time he was 18 and applying to universities there was more balance to his ambition.

Rugby was one possibility, university was another, and when the medical schools at Cardiff University and Trinity offered him places, the balance tilted towards medicine. But he was young and before anything, he went to Australia for a year, got a job, played rugby for Northern Suburbs and had a ball. While Down Under, he thought Trinity and Dublin would suit and, boy, was he right. Dublin fitted him like a glove; he played for Old Wesley, St Mary’s and, of course, the college XV. When Trinity ended 10 years of not winning the Colours match against UCD, he was in the middle of the front row.

It was a Friday game, they drank in Kiely’s of Donnybrook first, then went on a Joycean walk of Dublin’s pubs before ending the odyssey in Trinity’s beloved Pav. They returned to their senses around midday on Monday. And the studies went okay too. Whenever he thought about it, he felt he’d been lucky. He could have been a rugby professional but wouldn’t have been good enough for the top level; instead, he had a career and played rugby just for fun.

Plenty of guys before him at Trinity had moved on to Oxford and Cambridge and during his intern year at Tallaght Hospital in Dublin, he met Dr Ronan Browne, another former Trinity player who had played for Oxford in the Varsity match. Talking with Browne clinched it for him and from week one at Cambridge, he has been captivated. By the splendour of the city, by the traditions of the rugby club, even by the way no Cambridge player will say the name “Oxford” , but rather “the other lot”, and when he waited for Jon Dawson to knock on the door last Sunday, he was nervous. He expected to make the team but when you want something badly, you don’t presume.

But, here, the story grows more sombre. Crockett’s direct opponent this week will be Anton Oliver, a former New Zealand captain and a man who has worn rugby’s most prized shirt 59 times in Tests. And, at 33, Oliver remains one of the world’s best hookers. So, to ease Crockett’s mind, you tell the story about Frank Oliver, Anton’s dad. Frank Oliver, too, captained the All Blacks. In a match against the 1977 Lions, Frank was jumping against Ireland’s Moss Keane in the lineout. Keane was rough and rugged, Oliver was stern and unforgiving, and theirs was a serious game within a game.

Towards the end, Lions hooker Peter Wheeler called the code before throwing in to a lineout. “Two, x, alpha, 54, y, j,” he said, and as he raised the ball above his head, Keane muttered, to nobody in particular, “Ah, jaysus, not me again.” Crockett laughs, but you want to tell him this isn’t funny, Anton’s a chip off the old block, and soon enough, the young Welshman composes himself.

“Anton will be the best I’ve played against. I have a huge amount of respect for him, both as a player and a person. But you go onto the rugby pitch to beat your opposite man, especially so in the front row, and that’s what I’ll be doing. It is the biggest challenge of my career but I’m excited about it. Genuinely, I love testing myself on big days like this.”

In a romantic sort of way, you believe him. He tells about walking through the corridors at Cambridge, looking at names on walls and thinking about the footsteps he follows. He marvels, too, at the spirit in the Cambridge team, the manliness of those who didn’t get good news from Dawson last Sunday and the thrill of anticipation felt by every player.

At this point in his young life, there’s nowhere Matt Crockett would rather be.

Bigger than a test match?

The Varsity match has launched some of the great national rivalries, the most recent being the contest for the England fly-half jersey between Rob Andrew and Stuart Barnes, which began with the 1982 clash between Oxford and Cambridge. It kicked off a rivalry that lasted a decade

Tony Rodgers, who has coached Cambridge to victory 19 times in 28 years in charge, has no doubt who had the better of it. ‘In Varsity match terms, it was Rob Andrew who played three, won three — while Stuart Barnes played three and lost three.’ Rodgers says that Andrew, who was on the winning side for Cambridge against Barnes at Twickenham in 1982 and 1983, was a player who thrived in a high-pressure environment. ‘Rob was a very good, organised fly-half who had a strong kicking game, while Barnes was more mercurial and possibly more skilful but did not have Rob’s defensive attributes’

Andrew says he was attuned to a unique environment during his time as Cambridge’s fly-half. ‘Your Christmas was made or broken by whether you won or lost. It was fantastic and still gives me satisfaction — it was a huge pressure atmosphere. In 1982 I was only just out of school. I was at the back of the line as we ran out. It was the first time I had heard a roar from 35,000 voices and, momentarily, I froze. Those things stay with you forever’

Neither Barnes nor Andrew had been capped at the time, though there have been several leading players who have taken time out from their international careers to play for one of the universities. These include David Kirk, who represented Oxford in 1987 and 1988, having skippered New Zealand to their 1987 World Cup win, and another World Cup-winner, Australia’s Joe Roff. On Thursday, Anton Oliver and Daniel Vickerman take the field

Cambridge’s Mark Hancock was Kirk‘s opposite number in 1987 and came out on top. He recalls: ‘David scored a cracking try in the first 10 minutes but did not get enough quality service after that. He showed his quality after the match, by the grace he showed in defeat — you would never have guessed that he had won the World Cup a few months before’

Nick Cain