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When the explosion went off in the Bali nightclub, the Hong Kong rugby players would have been standing there, beers in hands, big smiles, scheming and laughing.

I am a member of the Vandals team and the seven missing members of the Hong Kong Football Club team are my mates. One of them, Peter Record, is my best friend, and was best man at my wedding this year.

Our fears deepen as the hours pass with no news of them being found.

Two years ago, on a previous Bali Tens tour, I stood in the same spot with some of those same guys, laughing, marvelling at our skill on the pitch and devising strategies to win silverware during the final matches.

Last week, when the team was short of the necessary 10 players, I seriously considered joining the tour. I didn't go because my wife is heavily pregnant.

We never would have imagined that the friendly restaurant and nightclub district in Kuta would claim the lives of our own.

My mates would have been in a tight circle - as they always are when beers are in hand -  with shoulders and elbows rubbing, occasionally making half-hearted forays on to the dance floor to jump up and down and let off some more steam away from the stresses of Hong Kong.

Some of the lads would have been standing aside holding their own discussions - old rugby touring stories being rehashed for the umpteenth time, business, politics, gossip and relationships (existing and those to be formed possibly later that night).

The conversations are wide-ranging for what is a diverse group of men, professionals working for multinational corporations and aged from their mid-20s to early 40s but united by rugby and friendship.

If the terrorists who masterminded Saturday night's horror thought their targets would all be ignorant infidels indulging in the pleasures of the flesh, they were wrong. These rugby players are ordinary people distinguished not only by a love for life but by a compassion for the underdog.

Peter Record is not only a talented and cheeky rugby player but a British business consultant with a brilliant, inquiring mind.

If the terrorists are indeed Islamic fundamentalists, they might like to know that Record - a masters graduate from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London -  questioned elements of the war on terrorism. He worried particularly about the parallels between Afghanistan and Cambodia.

He also lived among the Muslim poor of Indonesia, seeking to alleviate their harsh conditions during the early 1990s as a freshly recruited aid worker, and spoke Bahasa Indonesian fluently and enough Balinese to get a giggle from the locals.

Ironically, during the 2000 tour we discussed the challenges facing the Indonesian government in dealing with what he viewed as the mostly peaceful strand of Islam that has predominated there and an emerging radicalism.

He had laughed at the 'experts' who sought to play down the threat from Islam in Southeast Asia, as he had closely followed the growing links between its more virulent proponents in the Middle East and the region. His recent consulting activities had drawn him into the heart of Islam -  visiting Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

He was the young guy with an old head. He was the charmed bloke who seemed to breeze through life. Until a terrorist cut him down. When I heard he was believed to have been killed, my despair quickly turned to anger at the attackers' cowardice.

My first impression of Peter Record in 1999 was his quiet and calm, his very British air of authority as captain and his cunning guile and pace on the pitch.

'That is the sort of guy who you would put your faith in if you ever had to go into battle,' I told a fellow player.

What really galls is that it is doubtful if any of those 'terrorists' had it in them to go head to head on the pitch, where the only weapons are brains and brawn, with the likes of Peter and the other Vandals.

Missing, too, is Clive Walton, a marketing executive for an international courier company. He was one of the most generous people, always ready with a smile or kind word and just as ready to hand over money for charity or get involved with events to benefit the less needy. He was recently appointed rugby captain of the club and set out to make it the best in Asia, using a winning combination of his garrulous friendship and razor-sharp wit.

Missing is Dan Miller, a bright and energetic lawyer for a London-based firm who is just as agile mentally as he is on the pitch, where his trademark white sandshoes propel him consistently over the line.

He married about a month ago. Perhaps the biggest irony of all is that the gently spoken and warm-natured Briton met Polly during the 2000 Bali tour, when she joined some other Hong Kong friends to travel to watch the tournament.

Missing is Jake Young. A recent recruit to the Hong Kong Football Club, the towering player quickly became famous as the former All American college gridiron player with a crunching tackle. We also quickly came to realise the bruise-inducing Jake is a gentle giant whose baby son is the apple of his eye.

There is little doubt that when the blast went off the Vandals were still wearing their jerseys specially designed for the tour; it was tradition on the Bali tour to wear even out at night the dirtied, sweaty and bloody strips which, thanks to Pete's genius in 2000, carry the SAR bauhinia.

The fateful night would have started with dinner at a Kuta restaurant where 'fines' -  ranging from the downing of beers to other activities best not mentioned here -  would have been handed out for various mistakes made on the pitch during the day and perhaps over some embarrassing situation the previous night. It was then on to the Sari Club, where the Vandals jersey always received a warm welcome from doormen who knew their takings for the night were about to be nicely increased by the most social team in the tournament. And locals who frequent the area have come to know the jersey by sight and always give the wearers a smile. Which is why the act of terror and gutlessness that has probably claimed the lives of my best friends seems even more senseless.



My mates fall victim to gutless terror