‘The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle’

If there were a way to anthropomorphize a sport  – to give it human qualities and imagine what it might act like – rugby would certainly be a crotchety old British man obsessed with talking about how hard things were “back in his day.”

He’d have a slew of wildly exaggerated anecdotes to prove it too.

“Back in my day” he’d begin, “we used a rock for a ball! A big 20-pound one that we carried 100 miles from the seashore! And we never wore no padding or helmets either! We were naked! It made you run faster!”

Then he’d cackle wildly and start nostalgically muttering to himself, scaring off a younger sport like American football or dodgeball from coming anywhere near him.

Rugby is not a sport you hear a lot about in the United States. It’s often overlooked for the more familiar football and soccer.  To many, rugby is considered to be a crazy European version of American football that involves less padding, more running and more violence. And then there are the stereotypes – T-shirts that warn, “My drinking team has a rugby problem.”

But the newly hatched Belmont Ruggers just wanna have fun.

“The team that’s hosting the rugby game will actually throw a potluck for the other team afterwards,” said Bethany Nelson, president of Belmont’s now-official co-ed rugby club. “It builds a lot of teamwork and sportsmanship.”

Ruggers’ vice president Braxton Wilson agreed.

“I played soccer all my life, and rugby shows the same discipline as soccer. You have to have a lot of respect, especially for the other team.”

Wilson noted that in addition to discipline and respect, a lot of unity and understanding among a team is required for rugby. “You really need to know your teammates,” he said, “even more than football, because you have to know where your teammates are on the field, but you don’t have set plays every single play like football does, so you just really need to know your team.”

It’s especially important because rugby is a fast and aggressive sport – and there’s less padding and more running than in a football game.

“Injuries aren’t that common,” said Nelson, a transfer student from Minnesota who began forming the Belmont Ruggers in October. “There are actually fewer in rugby than in soccer; it’s just that when people do get injured in rugby, it tends to be a little bit worse.”

To the uninitiated, rugby might seem like a simple, or really confusing game that resembles something more like an endurance test for the insane than a coordinated sport.  “I just thought of a bunch of people in a huddle lateralling a ball around, and then just trying to score,” said Ben Housman, whose twin brother, Chris, is a freshman at Belmont and is on the Ruggers team. “I didn’t know a lot about it.”

Ben isn’t alone. A lot of people in America don’t know much about rugby, a sport that originated in the town of … well, Rugby, England. Legend has it that in 1823, a boy named William Webb Ellis was playing a game of soccer at school. And “with fine disregard for the rules,” picked the ball up and ran with it to the goal. This became a standing rule, setting the game apart from the hands-off approach to make a soccer goal.

In nearly two centuries, Ellis’s game has become widely popular around the world. It has had revisions and modifications, but the basic concept of running the ball to the end zone is the same. That sounds like American football, but there are fundamental differences.

For instance, when the ball goes down in football, there is a break in play and the clock stops. Rugby doesn’t have that. There are no “timeouts.”

“In football when you get tackled, the clock stops and you reset the play. In rugby, if you get hit and go down, you just keep going,” said Hunter Askew, a Belmont junior and Ruggers member. “It’s an addicting game, and it is a lot faster paced and more of an endurance game than football.”

A football game is 60 minutes of playing time split into four quarters – and there’s a 20- to 30-minute halftime break.  That’s in addition to the six timeouts each team gets during the game.

Rugby, on the other hand, is 80 minutes long – two 40-minute halves. The clock stops only for an injury, to substitute a player or replace a piece of clothing, or if a referee declares foul play on the field. Any time lost during a timeout has to be made up at the end of the half being played.

Old Man Rugby would be laughing at the NFL during their timeouts. “Oh, do you sallies need a water break?” He’d cackle, “Maybe you can give each other a foot massage! You wimps! Back in my day….”

The other big difference between football and rugby is the progression of the ball down the field. In football, the ball is rushed, passed, or kicked forward toward an end zone. This usually involves intricate offensive plays of the offense to create a “hole” for the quarterback to either run through or find an open man to pass to.

In rugby, the ball must be passed in a lateral motion back to a teammate.

“It’s not a fluid motion,” said Dane Mantia, a freshman on the team. “You can kick it forward and hope you get it, but throwing backwards is a weird dynamic to get used to.”

It’s been an established sport in America since 1874 and was an official Olympic sport for four Olympic games in the early 1900s. A revival of interest in the 1960s and ‘70s brought the formation of the USA Rugby union, with 75,000 members and established leagues across the nation.

But on the collegiate level, rugby is a club sport, meaning it’s up to a student or registered student organization to create a team and foster its existence, which can be a difficult task.

“We’re trying really hard,” Nelson said.

The Ruggers fund-raising had a T-shirt sale in early March to raise money for equipment and to “get the name out about the Belmont rugby club, because a lot of people don’t know about the team yet,” Nelson explained.

In April, the Ruggers are having a date auction for the women on Belmont’s campus to raise more money. That will also include options to win prizes from several Green Hills spas and restaurants.

But raising money is only half the battle of keeping the club going. To start playing against other teams like Vanderbilt and TSU, the Ruggers need more than the average 40 people that show up now.

“You can’t play other teams co-ed, so we’re trying to figure out a way to recruit more people,” Nelson said.

“The only thing I see standing in the way of us becoming a real legitimate club and getting aid from Belmont proper is the numbers,” Askew said. “How many people we can get out to come … consistently. In a club you have people who come and go, but this is also a team, so we need people who can play consistently.”

In a game, each team needs 15 players on the field at all times. Factoring in substitute players and aides for each team (men’s and women’s), that means a lot of people are needed.

“I think it’s going to keep getting bigger and bigger,” Mantia said. “We have a solid base of people.” And the Ruggers say they don’t fit the stereotype of unruly and violent players.

“I think it’s unfortunate that people think of it that way,” Nelson said. “I think the reason rugby’s image has gotten to that point is because it is such a social sport that people come out and watch and, in some cases, drink; but in our case, they’re just hanging out.”

And while being physically fit certainly helps in playing rugby, it’s not a requirement to play.

“There really is a spot for everyone on a rugby team, no matter what your athletic abilities or size,” Nelson said. Askew said the Ruggers provide a very inviting atmosphere.

“We’ve got all sorts of people out here,” he said. “People who are in shape, out of shape, who can run really well, or can’t to save their life.”

Sophomore Morgan Caldwell said it’s also proved a good way to meet people.  “It’s really about camaraderie, and I think it’s something you see at Belmont, but it’s more prevalent through this kind of sport.”

Wilson thinks that the Ruggers have what it takes to play against other local teams.

“We’ve watched a lot of Vanderbilt games and we feel we have the size, the speed, and working our way to the discipline that could play against any of the other teams in the league,” he said.

Come next fall, the Ruggers will be able to put Wilson’s prediction to the test; they enter the local league and will compete against local teams like Vanderbilt and Tennessee Tech, and regional teams from Memphis and Alabama as well.

The Ruggers encourage anyone interested in rugby to come out and try, Nelson said.

“It’s one of those sports where you can get involved at any time, as long as you have health insurance and go to Belmont, you can play.”

And then there’s another wild cackle from Old Man Rugby. “Health insurance? Oh, and will the lads and lassies be a-wantin’ padding as well? And maybe a helmet for your pretty little head? Heh, heh, heh.”