My wife and I have a ritual we observe every fall: I turn on the TV to watch a Denver Broncos game and then she complains about not understanding football.I explain the rules, which to me seem simple, to no avail. Even during the last Super Bowl, when she wanted the New York Giants to win because she’s from the Big Apple, she couldn’t wrap her head around the game.
Part of her inability to grasp the game of football comes from a lack of interest; the other part involves her wiring. No matter how many times I explain kickoffs, touchdowns and first downs, and quarterbacks, halfbacks and running backs, she’s not going to get it.
Having watched my first game of rugby, I know how she feels.
I didn’t catch a rugby game on cable; I saw one live and in person – in Chattanooga. Just like we have a semi-pro soccer team, a semi-pro football team and a roller derby team, we have a rugby team – and have had one since 1978. I learned about it while taking pictures of public art
at Sculpture Fields at Montague Park. That might not be the manliest way of learning about a new sport, but
when I saw the large swath of grass off 23rd street, I had to know why it was there.
I soon learned Chattanooga is home to Nooga Rugby, an amateur or semi-pro team, depending on who you ask and who they’re standing near. “We’re amateur unless there are women listening, and then we’re semi-pro,” one player, who was only half-kidding, told me. The team competes against squads from other nearby cities and in various regional and national tournaments. The game I caught was a friendly match against Covenant College. That’s right; those nice Presbyterians on the mountain have a rugby team, and they’re intense.
I wanted to take in a game of rugby because the sport has always been a mystery to me. Football, I know and
love; rugby has never made sense. Why do they gather together in huge huddles and push? Why don’t they stop playing after someone is tackled? Why can’t they pass the ball forward? Rugby has always seemed like an odd combination of soccer and football, and I wanted to understand what I was seeing.
All I had to do was show up at Montague Park and watch a game. Although I asked a few players to explain the rules, nearly every one of them said the best way to learn about rugby is to watch it – and they were right. By the end of the first 40-minute half, I’d learned all about those big huddles, called scrums. In a scrum, the eight forwards from each team bind together and attempt to push the opposing pack backward to gain possession of the ball by kicking it to the back of the scrum, where another player picks it up. Scrums are a way of restarting the game after a minor infringement.
Learning that was easy. Then someone mentioned a ruck, a play in which a mass of players gather around a ball dropped by a tackled carrier, with each player attempting to gain possession by kicking the ball to a teammate. After watching 80 minutes of rugby, I wasn’t sure I could even spot a ruck.
But I didn’t let my partial understanding of the game stop me from enjoying it. I was surprised to discover I knew more about rugby than I thought I did. The sport started out as a variation of soccer when a player at Rugby School in England picked up the ball and ran with it. American football is actually a variation of rugby, which helped me to understand the scoring. To score, a team runs the ball into the opposing squad’s in-goal area (called an end zone in football) and touches the ground with the ball. This is worth five points. The team can then score two more points by kicking the ball through the uprights of the goal post (similar to an extra point in football).
I just deleted a couple paragraphs explaining more rules because the best way to learn about rugby really is to watch a game. Also, having taken in my first match, I think the sport is meant to be experienced more than understood.
I spent most of my time on the sidelines at Montague marveling at how physically grueling rugby is. If you have a good sound system at home, then you can hear the grunts as opposing football players slam into each other at the snap of the ball. That’s nothing. In the game I saw, the rugby players wore very little protection – thin kneepads and mouth guards were it for most of them – and the lack of down time between possessions keeps things moving. Moreover, the constant struggle to possess the ball looked exhausting, and it seemed harder to advance toward the opposing team’s goal than in football.
Being accustomed to football, in which the participants are all but plastered in protective wear, it was unnerving at first to see a player tackle an opponent when at a full run and then watch as scores of other players heaped on top of them. But then I noticed something. In rugby, you don’t slam into another player with your head or your shoulders, because that’s going to hurt you, too; rather, you wrap your arms around your opponent and then bring him down. So even though the action is hard-hitting at times, I only once saw a player bring lying on the ground after everyone else had gotten up. The ref didn’t stop the game, and a minute later, the player had shaken off the hit and was back in the thick of things.
So, despite the lack of protection, I’ve seen more injuries in a football game.
Late in the match, a group of female rugby players from the team at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga showed up after their game to watch. One day, I was unaware rugby even existed in the Scenic City, and the next, players are popping up all over the place. Nooga Rugby is even developing an area high school team.
All of this makes now a good time to wet your feet as a spectator. Although you have to bring your own concessions and there’s only one small set of bleachers, parking is easy and crowds are small. That will change, though, as plans are in motion to build a field house and install a full set of bleachers at Montague.
If this column has piqued your interest, visit www.noogarugby.com to learn more. You’ll find a match schedule, club news, a forum and more. I found the player recruitment video intriguing, as I learned players range in age from 21 to 35 and include doctors, engineers, students and other average guys. Also, go to a game. The energy is amazing, and if you’ve never been to one, then you’ve never seen anything like it.
My wife and I will still be observing our annual gridiron ritual, but we might add a new one – watching a game of rugby. I just hope she doesn’t ask me to explain what a ruck is.