See Parts One, Two, Three, and Four to get caught up.
Where we've been heading this whole time is contemplation of how rugby, over its 200 year existence, became much more than a ball game.
Let's start here: To join a rugby club anywhere in the world is something like joining a cross between a Hell's Angels chapter, a Masonic lodge, a rock band, a street gang, an esoteric religious cult, Teddy Roosevelt's Roughriders, Peter Pan's Lost Boys, an insane asylum, a Viking raiding party, a charitable organization, a never-ending beer-chugging contest, a therapy group, and a riotously un-PC comedy troupe.
The only cost of admission into this intense brotherhood is, you have to play. You don't have to be good. You just have to give it your all. You have to go to war with the others. If you do, you're in, and you can stay in forever (barring extreme misbehavior, of course).
Games themselves are intense. But so is everything else surrounding the game. In fact, joining a club and starting to play pretty much takes over your life. Not just mine—everyone's.
Just for starters, there's the schedule. Depending on which team you're playing for (clubs often have three or more tiers of team: Premier, First Division, Second Division, etc.), your game will be on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. That night, there will be a social at the clubhouse with the opposing team. Monday night, many clubs host a touch rugby session (about two hours). Tuesday night is a full team practice (also about two hours). Wednesday night might be a mid-week get-together at the clubhouse. Thursday night is another two hour team practice. Friday night's free. Saturday, it starts all over again.
Along the way, the camaraderie naturally deepens. And this emerges not just from all the time spent at practice and social events, but from another feature of the game I haven't mentioned yet, but should now: Built into rugby are various moments of dangerous vulnerability from which only your teammates can extract you, and vice versa.
For example, when your teammates lift you high up in the air to catch a line-out throw, they'd better soften your fall back to earth, or you could easily break an ankle. Or worse.
Another example: In a scrum, eight players bind together in a pack, and push forward against the other team's pack. Your team's pack collapsing threatens serious neck injury to everyone involved. Everyone therefore has to pull together with maximum strength and technique (see here).
Yet another example: Once you're tackled, opposing players are entitled to plow directly over you to grab the ball you're obligated to release once you hit the ground. You can easily get trampled. To prevent that, your teammates bind together to protect you and the ball by rucking.
Every game features many such moments—meaning that in every game, you're bailing your teammates out of imminent peril, just as they are you. (That you're in imminent peril only because you yourself chose to jump into the game doesn't cross your mind. You're just glad your buddies bailed you out).
Then, there is the fact that the nature of the game demands players of all shapes and sizes. Scrum-halves are usually short and quick; they're constantly fishing balls out of rucks and scrums, zipping around, and often directing play. Locks are vital in the line-outs, and are usually very tall. Props prop up the scrum, and are usually very stout. Wingers can be tall or short, but must be fast over distances, and are often relatively lithe. It's not just that there's room for everyone; it's that you positively need every shape and size, or you can't win. Everyone knows everyone else is necessary, whether the other guy's 5'6" or 6'9".
So you add all this up, and what you get is unusually intense comradeship. This comradeship manifests itself well outside the games themselves. Rugby clubs serve as aggregators and distributors of invaluable information, resources, and opportunities. Need a new place to live? A new job? A new car? A new doctor? Trying to get into an exclusive university program, or move up the career ladder? Trying to start a new business? Got a problem with a particular business or creditor? Or with the law? Did your girlfriend go nuts on you and burn all your stuff? Need help moving? Or getting to and from somewhere? No problem—you're in the club. You have dozens of players, plus older retired players now volunteering, plus well-placed, loyal club alumni throughout the community, ready to pull together for you.
And your club, in turn, will have affiliations with other clubs all over the place—including around the world. To be in any club is to be part of a larger, global meta-club made up of all rugby clubs. So if you wanted to spend six months living and working in Australia, France, or Italy; Japan, Scotland, or Fiji; or anywhere else there's a rugby club, you just email or call ahead of time. You arrive, and they set you up.
One night, I stood next to the wife of one of the coaches at a post-game clubhouse event. All the players were there. Our club president called for attention and announced that two guys were coming over from France to play with us. We had the opportunity to accommodate them. Within two minutes of back-and-forth, an apartment had been arranged for them, along with a loaner car, jobs, and a couple of hosts to greet them and introduce them to the town and the other guys.
"We have nothing like this", said the coach's wife in a quiet voice. I wasn't sure what she meant.
"You mean, for women?"
"Yeah", she said. "We have nothing like this. There is literally nothing that can happen to any of you guys, that everyone else wouldn't help you out with here."
Her voice cracked. "I wish I would have had something like this when I was young. I wanted to travel and live in new places. Go deep, not just visit. I just didn't know anyone, and had no idea where to go. But this...this is awesome".
Indeed it was. But it was nothing new. (And as it happens, women's rugby has grown increasingly popular since our chat). Rugby's unusual club culture first got rolling just a few years after Headmaster Thomas Arnold passed away in 1842, at the age of only 46. How that culture developed and spread is a story not only about the power of the game itself, and how it welds teammates into a lifelong brotherhood, but about the power of pure story—real, fabricated, and somewhere in between—to capture the imagination and inspire novel action.
More next week.
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