Archived
Has "Elegant Violence" Gotten Too Elegant? Rugby Grows Up.
While playing with my college team at the annual New York Rugby Sevens Tournament, I realized that while I have largely given up my cleats and shorts for the pumps and skirts of adulthood, rugby itself has also become more mature and polished.
nlp226@nyu.eduThe bold blue-and-gold striped flier tacked prominently on the bulletin board advertised the latest high-end clothing boutique opening on University Place in New York City: “Rugby: A New Concept by Ralph Lauren.”
I shrieked and tore it down.
Ralph Lauren could not take rugby from me.
My relationship with the rugged English sport began quite accidentally my freshman year at Stony Brook University, when a friend roomed with a member of the women’s club team.
I had never played a sport, but decided a couple of rugby practices would be a fun way to keep off the Freshman 15. I had no idea what I was in for I showed up to my first practice in sneakers and pajama bottoms, while everyone else was wearing the standard Barbarian rugby shorts, knee socks and cleats.
To my surprise, despite the inevitable bruises, I was hooked after the first tackle of my first game even after I grabbed the ball and, in a spectacular display of intelligence, ran the wrong way up half the field.
Over the next three and a half years, I moved from rookie to veteran to captain. I twice won the coveted award for most tackles. Six years after that first practice, the friends that I made on that team remain some of my closest, and even as a busy graduate student, I still try to sub in on whatever matches that I can.
That’s why I was so upset when I saw the Ralph Lauren ad. Rugby encompasses everything that Ralph Lauren is not. Rugby is “elegant violence”, sure, but still dirty. College rugby was played by a crew that drank almost as much as we practiced. We came to class and proudly displayed our bruises. We were scruffy, and we were broke.
Rugby always had that allure of the unfamiliar: it was enticingly English, and it had its own language. We “rucked” over the ball, which looked like a football on steriods, and “mauled” and “scrummed down” without the protection of helmets or padding. Our positions had colorful names like “hooker” and “flanker” and “scrumhalf.” And our drinking songs and traditions were legendary even the refs would join in. The absolute scariest part about graduating college was giving up this lifestyle for dignified adulthood.
Last month, I subbed in a game with my ladies from the Long Island Bull Moose women’s club against the New York Village Lions. After the match, I dragged along a handful of my New York University classmates, excited to show them one of the real rugby drink-ups I had been bragging about, complete with songs and drinking games.
But the Lions did not sing. They also hardly socialized. “We don’t really do that,” one of their captains said. It was a tradition they had left behind, in college.
Was rugby changing its image, or were we just growing up?
Christopher Stahl, an N.Y.U. cultural studies professor, plays on the Gotham Knights men’s rugby team, and was hardly surprised by the Ralph Lauren store and the recent emergence of rugby stripes and polo shirts as a fashion trend.
Rugby, he explained, had been played by the upper class in England as an excuse to get down and to get dirty. As rugby crossed the ocean into the United States and abroad, however, it became an alternative game for college kids the John-Belushi-types. The image of the rugger was typically a prop-forward with a beaten face and an impressive gut.
Now it’s clear rugby is just returning to its posh roots. When one buys rugby calendars and posters, the featured players are often members of the back line or the smaller forwards. They have handsome chiseled faces, well-defined calves, and their jerseys are pinned to be more flattering to their physiques. A recent New York Times spread showed ruggers donning jerseys provided by Bergdorf Goodman. Rugby has been sexed-up, and now Lauren has opened his fourth Rugby store on University Place, a few blocks away from N.Y.U. a school with no rugby team itself, but plenty of affluent students looking to drop $68 on an authentic-looking rugby jersey or a cute striped t-shirt to wear with their designer jeans.
My teammate, Jamie Lee Nix, shared my disapproval. “I want more exposure for the sport,” she said, “but those girls didn’t earn those stripes.”
Stahl was more accepting, but even he expressed bemusement as the two of us toured the new store. While there was an eclectic array of collegiate athletic paraphernalia all over the walls, including soccer balls and rowing oars, there was not one rugby ball.
Said Stahl, “This is like an American’s British prep school fantasy.”
And although many framed pictures of rugby men in uniform donned the store, there were no pictures of rugby women. “Women don’t play rugby,” the sales associate explained to me.
I thought about that as I stood on the pitch on Randalls Island last Saturday. The New York Sevens Tournament each Thanksgiving weekend is a tradition for me and my fellow ruggers. Every year, it’s bitterly cold. Every year, despite our best efforts, we find ourselves with the minimum seven-player lineup. And every year, we have a great time.
Yet, this year was different. I arrived late, and stepped onto the pitch without a chance to warm up. I was playing at hooker the centerpiece position in the scrum responsible for “hooking” the ball back with my foot a position that I had never played before. And I was playing with girls I hardly knew on the B-side team, since I hadn’t been able to make the practices with the A-side.
As I watched the white, oblong rugby ball flip end-over-end through the air at kickoff, my stomach was in knots as I realized I no longer quite knew what I was doing.
Until, a minute or so into my first game, against Canada, I tackled a girl low wrapping my arms around her knees and feeling the satisfying THWACK of the two of us hitting the ground and it knocked some sense into me. I realized that I was Home. Just, Home has changed slightly. As have I.
I played hard, but my team lost all three of our games - though we kept some dignity in still managing to score. It was disappointing, but I left the pitch feeling pretty cheerful. I laughed and screamed my voice hoarse. My face was wind-burned and my lips were chapped raw, and I had gotten a pretty impressive gash on my knee that was oozing and continuing to swell, but I posed for a team photo and felt my soul at ease. There’s nothing like a little rugby to overcome those holiday blues, the pressures of grad school, or the occasional quarter-life crisis.
Things will continue to change. My sport may gain and lose popularity, and one day I will have to hang up my cleats for good. My teammates are all scattering, yet there is still a firm ground where we can meet. A pitch, a ball, some cleats, and we all come together again and fall into our old roles.
After the tournament, at the bar 1849 on Bleecker and Macdougal, I was sitting in a chair and sipping a glass of Magic Hat while talking to Toby, a 27-year-old rugger whom I’ve known since college.
Tobes has been out of the rugby game for awhile, as I have, and yet still steps in for the occasional match. Other old friends from the Stony Brook team showed up, and we had a blast.
“Everyone is yelling and drinking,” said Toby. “It’s great. Just the way it always was.”
For a few hours, anyway.
Photo contributed by Dana Martens