Tall Tales from the Rugby House
(Originally published in The George Street Carnival 2012)
I couldn’t help but blame Ernest Hemingway for the situation I was in as I stood on the fifth battered wooden step of a staircase that was barely the width of my shoulders.
I looked up and saw the silver hollow drum on its side perched on the top step. How had I gotten here?
I remember seeing the informational poster, but what actually made me think this was a good idea? I know it had something to do with Hemingway, the bastard.
***
My friends looked at me wide-eyed and with raised eye-brows when I told them that I was considering playing rugby. My mother flat-out said that she didn’t want me to do it. The general consensus of those who don’t play rugby of those that do play rugby is that rugby players for lack of a better phrase are, “fucking crazy”.
This isn’t exactly an unearned reputation because rugby is one of the few sports left that embraces the title full contact sport proudly.
Rugby tradition also states that teams should share a keg together when it’s over since, no matter what happens on the field, it’s not personal, it’s just rugby. Win or lose, there’s always booze.
That’s what I was told going in. Rugby, I found out, was like nothing I’d ever seen.
***
I thought eight years of wrestling and six years of football had put me through it all. I had needed stitches, MRI’s, and taped ankles. I had black eyes, bruised but never broke my nose, suffered concussions, and pushed through physical therapy. And I loved it.
There is something about showing up in class on Monday with the weight of strangers’ eyes pressing on your fresh stitches and knowing that the minds behind those eyes are thinking, “What the fuck does that guy do on the weekends?”
So I treated starting rugby like a veteran. I was going to strap on my boots and get to work.
It wasn’t the size of the guy who introduced himself to me as Cadillac that made clear my throat. It wasn’t the size of his hand as he offered it to mine. It was the fact that as he turned and walked away I saw that he had Ville Rugby tattooed on his calf.
The coach showed up and introduced himself, an older guy who teaches high school during the day. He even had the rugby tattoo. It was a bit more faded, but it sat there in the afternoon sun; the logo of a rugby player proudly running, a rugby ball under his left arm, and in his lead hand a mug of beer.
I remember laying out for a ball during my first practice to compliments of the team, and I remember making a hard hit on the ball carrier which brought louder more sustained applause.
They told me I looked good, but wait until my first game.
***
My old football coach always said he didn’t like making comparisons of war and football after telling us we were going to march on the field and battle the other team until the end.
My old football coach wasn’t descriptive enough.
Football is like old wars with starts and stops, rules and lines. There are positions and jobs and codes of conduct, flags and celebrations. People march in time to calls and only a few select people can make something happen on any given play.
Rugby, I’ve come to believe, is much more like war as we know it.
Once the ball is kicked, once the first shot is fired, there is no escape. There will be blood. Blood was running brazenly down my face within the first two minutes of my first rugby game. Nobody told me to go off the field. They said wipe it on your shirt until the Sir notices and forces you to get treatment.
The only way you’re getting away from the fight is if you’re carried off. When a man goes down in combat, his squad tries to defend him, in rugby when you are tackled your teammates rush in and stand over top of you, defending you from the other team.
You are constantly moving, you are constantly in danger of having your head taken off whether you have the ball or not. It is a chaos that exists for eighty minutes on a small patch of grass, a chaos that always threatens to spiral out of control; punches will be thrown, knees will find foreheads, elbows will find temples.
I’m not going to tell you that anything goes on the rugby field, because that’s not true. Anything that you can get away with goes on the rugby field.
Everyone has to be capable of doing everything on the rugby pitch. Nobody is irreplaceable. There is no superstar quarterback. There is no whiny show-boating receiver. There is no one that is too good for a certain job.
If your sergeant told you to apply pressure to a comrade to stop him from bleeding out, you wouldn’t stand there saying you’re not a qualified medic, in rugby when they tell you you’re getting the ball you lower your shoulder and run straight at those sons-of-bitches on the opposing team whether you’re a two-hundred and fifty pound battle tank or an one-hundred twenty pound skeleton.
All men are equal on the rugby pitch.
***
I handled this chaos as best as I could in my first game. Listening to the pounding flesh hitting flesh the thud accompanied with sharp grunts. My head spun with everything that was going on at once. One minute we were running the ball and the next we were chasing the other team down the sideline. I remember running the ball and being lifted into the air by the defensive tackler and thinking that this was not going to end well.
I remember stepping into the shower after the game and blowing my nose. What came out was a mixture of dirt, blood, and mucus. I knew I was hooked.
We had lost, but the beer afterward was good. And as the boys began to cut loose nothing became out of the question. As it turned out to my confusion the question was, “Do you want to play Donkey Kong?”
The overwhelming answer was yes.
Donkey Kong in rugby terms is a recreation of the arcade classic where an empty keg is launched from the top of the stairs and the man playing must stand in the middle of the staircase and try to jump over it.
As a rookie I didn’t have the choice as to whether I was going to play Donkey Kong or not.
***
So here I am standing on that fifth step, looking down at my converse and then back up at top step, praying to god that I don’t break my fucking leg on this empty keg as it tumbles down.
Remember that thing about rugby players being “fucking crazy”? It’s true.
An alumni rugger gave the keg a push, rocking the drum off each stair with a shaking crash. I really couldn’t be stupid enough to try this.
I bent my legs and jumped, I watched my left leg clear the silver aluminum boulder, but I felt my right shin clang against it. They praised my effort as I slunk away and poured myself another beer mumbling to myself,
“Hemingway would have played rugby.”
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