Dave Chamberlain

It remains one of America's least-understood, least-played sports, relegated to the bottom of the pack while the country takes in baseball, American football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, figure skating, squash, curling, chess, jai alai, swimming and ping pong.

Even soccer, the world's favorite game but a distant fifth in the United States, gets a better shake than rugby. But away from the spotlight, away from the glare of America's obsession with player salaries and statistics, rugby is gaining a foothold among young American men and women. After years of toiling away in obscurity, an extensive network of divisions and leagues has been established, everywhere from New York to California to Atlanta to the South Side of Chicago. The game, which involves hardcore tackling and players with almost no safety equipment, is often called a "thug sport," and is taking off--bloody nose, broken wrist and all.

The first thing you need to know about rugby: when you're on the ground, you can't move the ball with your hands. It might seem like a trifling rule violation, what with the punching, kicking, savage stomping and general disorder, but really--if you move the ball while you're on the ground, they might just call a penalty.

The scene is Gaelic Park, a south suburban rugby field. A team of local lads, the South Side Irish RFC (Rugby Football Club), the second-ranked team among "second division" rugby clubs nationwide, are warming up before its final pre-season match against the second side (B-team) of the Chicago Lions, one of two area teams in the "first division." Wearing traditional rugby uniforms--jersey and shorts--nearly twenty men stretch, run and practice passing drills with the rugby ball, a bigger and fatter version of the football. The wind is cold, but it's still the warmest game-time of the year. "Not quite like last week," barks an Australian accent across the assembly. The South Side Irish's last game took place the week before, in Ohio, during the Midwestern cold snap that forced them to play in temperatures less than 20 degrees. In shorts.

At the head of the team, a smallish man with dark sunglasses observes the proceedings: Marty Wiggins, native Australian and coach to the South Side Irish. Wiggins came to Chicago after working as the assistant manager of the Queensland Reds of Australia's Super 12 (see sidebar). Every South Side Irish player attributes the team's success to Wiggins. With him as coach, The Irish made the national Sweet Sixteen before losing to a team from Fresno, California.

With game time at hand, the team--both the A-side who are playing and the B-side who will play the next game--lock arms, form a circle and huddle up. With three manly "HUH"s, the team breaks and takes the pitch. The game starts like an American football game: The ball is kicked off to the waiting arms of the receiving team. A member of the Irish takes the kick, jukes one or two of the oncoming team, and goes to the ground in what appears to be an out-and-out riot. From there, all hell breaks loose.

"I still don't know the rules," says Mick Berry, a lifetime South Sider who's presently in his second season with the Irish. "In fact, I don't even know half of the rules." But Berry, 27, who played competitive American football his entire life, up through college at St. Francis, doesn't let that stop him. "Honest to God, I played football my whole life and I like this a lot better." Despite the way it looks on the field, Berry notes that "Rugby's more organized. You've got defense and offense the whole time. In football, I played offense, and on a lot of plays, you're not involved. But [in rugby], you're involved the whole time out there, and you've got to stay up for the whole thing."

What looks like absolute chaos on the field--or pitch--is actually well-organized chaos. Though the rules--set down in the nineteenth century by the Rugby Football Association and maintained today by the International Rugby Board--are as in-depth as they are in American football, to watch or play you only really need to know a few basics.

For starters, no forward passing is allowed, and as such, a game of rugby closely resembles American football in the early twentieth-century. Blocking for a ball carrier is also not allowed. A "try"--rugby lingo for what is essentially a touchdown--is so named because it isn't scored unless you actually touch the ball down in the end zone, and counts for five points. Extra points (worth two) are obtained by kicking the ball through the uprights in the end zone; simiarly, field goals ("free kicks" or "penalty kicks") count for three points, just like American football.

But as opposed to American football, which has a team punting the ball on a change of possession, a rugby team might punt the ball at any time. In fact, when a team is near its own goal, they'll often punt immediately, just to move the ball further away. The major difference is, unlike American football, a punted ball doesn't indicate a change of possession; instead, the team that gets to the ball first, keeps it.

The scrum marks a key component of rugby. When a penalty is called or a player gets hurt and play stops, in order for play to begin again, a scrum--which is comprised of eight players from the fifteen on each team--occurs. By interlocking arms to assure no player can play the ball with his hands, both teams engage each other (not completely unlike the beginning of a play in football). The scrum-back (or halfback, something like a quarterback) then tosses the ball into the middle of the scrum, and the interlocking players attempt to kick (or "hook") the ball outside the scrum, where the ball is picked up and play resumes.

Not knowing the rules or even the intricacies of the game doesn't dissuade the American boys from playing. John Delport, a South African national who's presently in his third season with the Irish, explains. "I think it's just a matter of experience versus actually knowing the ins and outs of the game," he says when asked to explain the differences between rugby in the States and in South Africa. "These guys [Americans] start playing when they're eighteen or twenty, so by the time they get to be thirty-one, they're slower, but they know the game well. With us [South Africans], we start when we're seven, so by the time we get to be eighteen or twenty, we know the game; the actual fundamentals are ingrained. [Americans] rely on brute strength, but when the game gets to a crunch situation, the experience comes in hand."

Delport does his best to offer suggestions to the more inexperienced players, and he notes that--against other teams--it's the experience that shines. "Whereas in South Africa you have fifteen guys on the field who know the game in and out, here you might have ten, twelve if you're lucky, and three guys who are great athletes. That's a big difference between the countries--here, the athletes are top-notch, but they don't know the game as well. When we play other teams, you can really see that. They're big and fast, but being coached by a world-class coach, we can play the game better."

Halftime at Gaelic Park.

The Irish have played well, and are up on the Lions 28-17. The lads sit down for Coach Wiggins to assess their play.

"Has everybody got a drink?" he asks through a thick Aussie accent. "Then shut-up." The Irish go quiet. "We've done a lot of good things out there, but really, our defense has been terrible." Despite the fact that the Lions are a first-division team, Wiggins isn't happy with the way the Irish are tackling. "I know it's difficult, and if you can't square yourself you can get caught flat-footed, but this is exactly what we worked on all week, and"--he pauses, looking nearly exasperated--"we just have to do better."

Wiggins is berating a motley crew. The players, whose green and white striped jerseys were clean and pressed, are now grass-stained and dirty. One player listens with a tampon jammed up his nose to prevent blood from trickling down. "It's an old trick," another player from the B-side whispers.

In many ways, rugby rules mirror those of international soccer. The clock (forty-minutes per half) runs continuously, with extra time added at the end (referee's discretion) to make up for game time lost to injury. For especially serious penalties, the referee hands out yellow and red cards. A yellow card works like a warning; your next card is red. A red card is an automatic ejection. Additionally, a player given a red card cannot be replaced, and said player's team must work a man short for the game's duration. Also like international club soccer, the last-place team at the end of the season is "relegated" to a lower division, and can only return by winning a championship.

Only four substitutions are allowed per game, which are used near the end of a match, to give the team a boost of energy. Injured players are dealt with differently, but once a player leaves the pitch, he cannot return. Also, there's a time limit as to how long it takes for a player to stop bleeding; officially, a team has two minutes to stitch up cuts or coagulate a gaping wound before the player must leave the field. Though that seems harsh, especially in a game known as a thug sport, serious injuries don't occur very often in rugby, despite the lack of pads and inherent violence.

"I've really never been hurt too bad," says Berry, despite the fact that his nose is bleeding. "I separated my shoulder, but that happened all the time in college, so it's a matter of just having bad shoulders. In football, I broke fingers all the time, and hurt my leg pretty bad."

There's a hockey mentality fueling the players--even more so, considering that, unlike professional hockey players, rugby players in America invariably pay to play--that makes getting back on the pitch the top priority, regardless the injury. "The worst I got hurt was actually here," says Delport. "I played for fifteen years in South Africa, and I cracked my clavicle, broke some fingers--just little stuff, but that's part of the game; you just suck it up. Last spring I tore my MCL [Medial Collateral Ligament, which helps connect the femur to the tibia], but I just strapped it up and played through it."

Also like hockey, it's not unheard of for a couple players to start throwing punches in the middle of a match--whether it's Ireland playing Scotland or two Chicago teams. "Yeah, fights happen," says Berry. "But it's on the field. Off the field, you have a beer with them after the game, so it's good. It's just that, sometimes you might get yourself caught in the wrong situation out there, and you might get popped one. You just make sure you can pop them back."

Despite what appears to be blatantly brutal, rugby is above all a gentleman's game. Through the South Side Irish-Lions match, the referee is called "sir"; during halftime, coach Wiggins gives accolades to individual players, who are then loudly "thanked" by the rest of the squad. In the official rugby rule book the referee is directed to penalize anyone who "acts contrary to good sportsmanship." Foul language is not allowed on the field.

Back at Gaelic Park, the South Side Irish are hanging on. Despite having built up a huge lead, the Irish allow the Lions to stage a furious comeback late in the game. Despite a late try from the Lions, the South Side Irish win the match, 45-20. As the A-side come off the pitch, the B-side players form a tunnel with their arms and give every player a resounding congratulations. No serious injuries seem to have occurred, and as the B-side team takes the field, members of the first squad sit in the bleachers to give support. Most crack open a beer the second they sit.

Notes Delport, "That was one of the best games we've played in terms of true rugby. They [the Lions] are a well-coached team. But we took it to them." With the real schedule starting up next week and, depending upon tournament outcomes, potentially ending in late June, the victory is a large step towards the Irish repeating as Midwest champs.

Of course, the action hardly stops when the game is over. "It's called a thug sport," says Delport. "But if you want to see real barbarism, go out to the bar with us afterwards."

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