All right. I had been planning to leave my public speculations about "Rubber" until the real explanation is posted. I was afraid of possibly ruining a story surprise. But since others are speculating, and since I know from a private e-mail exchange with Corrina that my guesses are wrong, I'll post them here. If you don't want to be spoiled by incorrect guessed, please skip the rest of this post.
My two ideas were:
1) A "rubber" in Great Britain refers to what we in the U.S. would call an eraser. Guessing that it may have the same meaning in Oz, I speculated that it was a nickname disparaging Clark's writing skills - that it implied he made a lot of mistakes that had to be erased.
2) Rubber is a very flexible material. My second guess was that it was intended as a tribute to Clark's flexibility in being willing to fly half-way around the world at a moment's notice to cover a sport about which he knew nothing but was willing to learn.
I am really looking forward to finding out the actual origin of "Rubber" as Clark's nickname.
Kudos on another excellent story part. You really captured Clark's relationship with his mother. I've always loved that although he is a highly respected journalist at a world-class newspaper, and his alter-ego is, as you put it, idolised as some sort of a god, nevertheless to Martha and Jonathon he is just their little boy grown up, albeit an incredibly precious and special son.
cheers,
Lynn
