Rugby Weekend

Yes--things like this actually happen. Pretty close, anyway.

My mother finds it quite hilarious that I have become a rugby fan in the past couple months. Well, the way I see it, I am a BYU fan first and foremost, I have a competitive streak, and I am extremely loyal to my team, and it all kind of stems from there. ("Ariel? Competitive?" I can hear some of you saying. Um, yeah--you might not see it, but it's there. It gets a little extreme sometimes, too. I've tried to tone it down in the past five years, but you should've seen me play high school soccer. I got the most penalties of anyone on my team one year. It's not a part of myself that I'm extremely proud of.) Anyway, I went with my roommate and a few friends to the men's collegiate rugby national championship on Saturday at the Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy. BYU vs. Cal Berkeley. Bears vs. Cougars. Whoof.

The game was a rough one, and both teams fought tooth and nail for each try ("Try" is the term for scoring in rugby). Of course, I think rugby is inherently more violent/conducive to injury than a lot of other sports. I've been to a few home games, and of course, since we're BYU, we start with a prayer. One of my favorite lines? "Please bless that there won't be too many drastic injuries..." Seriously. Almost all the guys had ice wrapped on their body somewhere after one of the games.

My friends and I had fun cheering as the team made progress, and bemoaned each turnover or dropped pass. Yeah, none of us knew exactly what was going on at times--heck, we don't know all the rules. But I've gotten a little better idea over watching several games. And, of course, periodically I had to recite my favorite quotes from the two rugby movies I've seen:

"Soccer's for kids. Football's for wussies. Rugby's for MEN." ~Forever Strong
"Soccer is hooligans playing a gentleman's game. Rugby is gentlemen playing a hooligan's game." ~Invictus


I think there's a lot of truth to that latter statement. Sometimes the whole thing seems like a free-for-all, and anything goes in the tackling, pushing, shoving skirmish. Yep--it's fun to watch. (It seemed an awful lot like watching my five brothers in one of their spontaneous wrestling matches sometimes...) The pace of the action is interesting, because while the play is continuous, like soccer, the pace accelerates and then stalls at intervals with passes and kicks and scrums and so on. Go see for yourself--I think you'll be intrigued, at the very least.

This, my friends, is a scrum.
Thanks to my friend and former roommate Emily for the photo.

Yeah--I like rugby. It's one of my new... interests, I guess you could say. I mean, I haven't become a fanatic who eats, sleeps, and breathes rugby, but I definitely enjoy watching our team play. Yes, I'd prefer rugby over football any day. SADLY, we LOST 21-14, by one try, to those darn Bears on Saturday. Grrr. But I was proud of our boys for the hard-fought battle. Good fight. Good season--this was the first game our team had lost. Yes, you will see me in the stands next year, cheering just as loudly. It's okay--I understand if you don't want to sit next to me. But seriously--that last call was BALONEY. :)

photo by Frederic Humbert on Flickr