Rugby Club Ready for Scrum and Fun

The annual spring migration of HDA sweatshirt-clad athletes from the cozy confines of the IAB across the clear grey Charles begins tomorrow with the opening of the rugby season.

The squad engages Columbia in battle tomorrow afternoon in New York before heading to Bermuda for a week of two games and plenty of recuperation. City College of London will be entertained by the Crimson in its April 10 home opener in the shadow of Harvard stadium.

How will the team fare this year? That's not the most important thing for the team. Dennis Downey '78 says, "We take a different attitude towards winning and losing than other teams. There's always drinking after the games and often times there's drinking before the games."

According to President Mark Heffner '76-3, the team faces a "really challenging schedule, both socially and athletically."

Heffner sees the April 24 MIT match as the biggest one of the year. The Engineers were New England champs last spring and their encounter is being hosted by Wheaton College. Heffner says this will be an important social opportunity.

This chance to broaden social horizons seems to appeal to many of the club members. Co-captain Mike DeMatteo quit football and became involved in rugby. "It's a perfect time commitment and there are some appealing social aspects," he says.

Heffner says that he "hated the game when he started but it was the people who kept him going." He cautions however that rugby is more than a Saturday afternoon picnic. "It's an intense athletic experience and you don't have to play the game well to have a good time." "It's poetry in motion," says Downey.

When most uneducated sports fanatics think of rugby, they see a roughed-up, insane version of American football--uncontrolled violence. They picture the "scrums" and "line outs" in which teammates lock arms and heads and glare at their opponents waiting for the squashed football to be tossed into their midst. And then the uninformed sees, to his horror, 15 or so players throw themselves into a rumble. But the ball always squirts lose from somewhere under that mass of humanity.

Actually, the embattled particpants of this rumble use their feet attempting to feed the ball to a "scrum half" who flings it to a back. The back line, spread diagonally behind the ball carrier as a formation of seagulls or rather as a wedge of football players, swarms upfield as the ball is flung, always backwards, towards the sideline.

Eventually, the player crosses the goal line holding the ball and touches it to the ground. "Tri!" It's worth four points.

In its drive to score tris, Harvard will emphasize conditioning. Looking ahead to the City College of London game, Heffner says, "We're going to try to outdistance them and outpower them." But he is not too optimistic. Rugby is like football in England and "we're the match they came to play because we're Harvard."

Tomorrow's match hangs in the balance. Columbia is mediocre but it has played four matches this spring while the Crimson has been limited to some workouts in Carey Cage.

As Downey says, the rugby club "may not win many games but there should be some good rugby." And there should be a lot of fun.