Rugby: Blood, Sweat and Beers

Some people call it a gentlemanly, sociable game. All the players call the referee "sir," and a keg of beer waits on ice at the side of the field. Both teams and the referee drink to friendship after the game.

But this traditional amiability is lost on the casual fan, who sees only the violence of rucks and the madness of scrums and wonders why anybody would want to play rugby.

Members of the Harvard Rugby Football Club pay due respect to the game's tradition's, and their brand of play--rough even by rugby standards--makes it look at times like one or two may actually love the game.

The team plays its games on a field by the river, behind the remains of the track bubble. Covered with ice by the end of the fall season and half submerged by the spring thaw, the field muddies the confusing mass of players.

But there's a simple order beneath it all. The eight largest members of each team bind together in a straining crowd of bodies that's called the scrum.

The scrum half pitches the ball into the midst of the assembled bodies. Within, players from each team try to move the ball with their feet into their half of the scrum.

If the ball should go Harvard's way, co-captain Tom McKinley at lock heals it out to Barlow, who either grabs it and runs for dear life or passes it out to his backs.

"We have more big men in the scrum this spring," Barlow says. "They get a real good push and help us control the ball."

But the job of ball control also lies with the backs. Fly half Joel McLafferty receives the ball from Barlow and either kicks it downfield or laterals it to club president Mike Noble at inside.

After McLafferty gets rid of it, and sometimes before, the opposing fly half tries to deck him. When the other team has the ball, it's McLafferty's turn. The two go at it all afternoon.

If Noble gets the ball and can't find running room, he pitches it back to co-captain Adrien Tew, a bruising breakaway runner.

By this time the scrum has broken up and released a swarm of forwards chasing the ball. In rugby the big men are allowed to run with the ball, so they're always ready for a pass.

Forwards can be the most dangerous runners in the game. In a reversal of the roles many of them have played in football, they delight in trampling smaller backs who make vain attempts to tackle them or who fail to get out of their way.

Two football players who will see a lot of the ball this spring are Hank Lauricella and Doug Quimby.

Both play at wing forward--a position requiring strength, since it's a part of the scrum, as well as speed, since wing forwards are the first to unbind and pursue when the ball leaves the scrum.

McKinley, who at lock calls the signals for the rest of the scrum, has been a leading scorer for the past three years. "It looks good," McKinley says. "We've got about fifty guys out for the team and nearly a dozen of those are football players."

However, the team has been hurt in its early season games by a lack of practice time. In March they had to practice evenings in Briggs Cage to save the field for games.

"It's hard to work on skills in there, but we've got a lot of talent, and with a little practice we should do pretty well," McKinley adds.

The club will get plenty of practice when it heads for Florida over spring break. On the first weekend it will compete in the Gainesville "Gator Tournament," which McKinley says is "the biggest rugby event in the south."

Among the sixteen teams entered in the tournament are clubs from Brown, Michigan, and Notre Dame.

After a week of practice in the hot Florida sun, the team will head for the University of Miami for a game under the lights, before returning to Harvard and a full slate against other eastern teams.