Are you tough enough?
Can you take the hard hits, the big tackles and the piles of bodies all struggling for the same ball? Can you picture yourself playing beside your teammates in rain and mud and heat? Are you ready to give yourself up for the world's second-most popular sport behind soccer?
If so, forget football. Fall is for rugby.
In the U.S., rugby is a sport that most people don't encounter until college. There are precious few high school programs and even fewer varsity college programs, but the game has survived for years as a club sport in colleges nationwide. Rugby is the great-granddaddy of modern football, when men were men, when a touchdown was a "try" (worth only five points) and when there was no such thing as the forward pass.
In the U.S., football has become a science. Rugby, by contrast, is still a passion. Ruggers take great pride in the rugby community as a network with an instant bond. The U.Va. men's rugby Web site quotes Shakespeare: "He today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother," and there is indeed an incredible fraternity between ruggers that only those who have played can understand.
Last week, the U.S. National Rugby Team beat Japan, 39-26, in the Rugby World Cup in Australia. It was a hard-fought victory, but it was twice as sweet considering that the U.S. Eagles have not won a World Cup game in the last decade. In fact, the U.S. was winless in World Cup play for the last 16 years -- the longest drought in the 25-year history of the Cup. But courtesy of a stellar performance by fly half Mike Hercus, the U.S. broke the losing streak and tasted victory in international play. Their next game, a 41-14 loss to the French, was almost irrelevant in comparison: American rugby has snuck a toe in the door of the Rugby Room, where more than 90 countries field national teams and competition is more fierce than any Super Bowl.
Don't think for a minute that a 16-year losing streak is indicative of all American rugby. The college club scene continues to thrive, and Virginia boasts two of the nation's strongest programs: Their men's and women's club rugby teams.
Maybe you've seen them playing in the Mad Bowl on the weekends, or just heard the cries of "Ruck! Ruck!" from weekly practices on Lambeth field. If you haven't, you're missing out.
In a time when professional sports are increasingly about individual stars instead of entire teams, rugby is a sport that demands the team sticks together, if only for its own survival.
The game is admittedly rough. With very little protective gear and full-contact tackling, injuries do happen. When the Virginia women's squad traveled to "Rucktoberfest" in Boone, N.C. two players collided heads on a tackle, knocking out one player's front teeth. "Babe," instead of screaming her head off like a normal person, held her teeth in her hands and remarked to her coach, "My parents are going to kill me." Later, with Babe and her teeth in a local hospital, a nurse entered the room. "Your friends called," she said. "They wanted me to tell you they won, and they have decided [to tell your parents] that you have scurvy." Nowadays, Babe often goes by "Limey."
It is a peculiar part of Virginia women's rugby culture that every member of the team has a nickname: Satan, Keeper, Babe and so on. Of course, when you're state champions and have been to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen five years running, you can pretty much do what you want.
On the men's side, there is no lack of quirky tradition. According to a member of the team, "one player has kept a three-season-long tradition of wearing the exact same unwashed pair of underwear to each match. Also, a standard tradition for rugby clubs the world over is that when a player scores his first try, he is to run a specific route naked either directly after the match or at the post-match party. This is known as a zulu try."
The men's side has been around four years and is still eagerly awaiting a zulu try from some of their members. Even so, they are having a lot of success, winning tournaments like George Mason's Brawl on the Mall and Tulane's Mardi Gras tournament. Behind All-American captain Tom Sanders and All-State captain Nick Conell, the men hope to contend for the national title this spring.
Still, with rugby not all is fun and games. The women's team has sought varsity status, but money and competitive structures have prevented the athletic department from taking them in. This means that rugby players still don't have access to the athletic training room or indoor practice facilities at the University. The team still has hopes, however, that with the network of rugby alumni they may have a chance at an endowment like the one that started Virginia women's golf team last year.
There is an entire culture within the rugby community that extends far beyond the Virginia teams. Women's rugby coach Nancy Kechner recited the old adage that puts it best: "Soccer is a gentleman's game played by barbarians, but rugby is a barbarians' game played by gentlemen. And women."
In the name of this colorful, powerful sport, then, I leave Virginia rugby and future U.S. Rugby teams with this: Ruck On.
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