Rugby... It seems so obvious now

In Scotland I roomed with a girl who played rugby for UNC. She was sharp as a tack, cute as a button, kind to animals and the homeless – that sort of thing, and she could drink me under the table on a hangover. Her existence convinced me that rugby was a viable sport for me, and I’ve toyed with the idea of signing up off and on ever since. Last night I went to my first rugby practice with the local team, the Indianapolis Hoydens. I've played different full contact sports such as hockey and tae kwon doe, but there's something about running with a ball in my hands and hitting people in the great outdoors that I really enjoy.

Allow me to offer a brief explanation of rugby from one who only understands it in the briefest of ways. The mechanics of rugby are at once familiar and foreign. American football shares a lot with rugby. The ball is moved up the field towards your team's goal (in football it's an endzone). Points are scored for literally touching the ball down on the ground which scores you a "try", 5 points. After scoring a try you get to kick the ball through uprights for extra points. A player may also kick the ball through the uprights directly, but that's rare. There is tackling in rugby and the team is pretty much divided into two segments, the backs and the forwards or the pack. The backs are small agile, and the top scorers. The forwards, or packees, are burly and do the grunt work of moving the ball forward. If you've ever seen rugby before undoubtedly you've witnessed a bunch of people tightly bound together ramming their bodies into an opposing group of people equally bound. This is called a scrum and is rugby's jump ball or face off. The forwards engage in the scrum while the backs, well, hang back. The idea is to get the ball back to your own team's backs who will advance the ball up the field.

A scrum

So all of this has elements with which I'm at least vaguely comfortable as I can draw comparisons to other sports I've played. But then it gets weird.

Thou shalt not throw the ball forward.

I knew this going into practice, but I didn’t understand the impact until I actually saw it implemented. Because of that little rule the act of moving the ball down the field is totally turned on its ear. Soccer, Football, hockey, basketball. Think of how much different these sports would be if you couldn't send the respective object of play directly forward. In rugby the ball must be thrown backwards and only run or kicked forward. This creates a constant looping pattern whereby the team with possession runs in a diagonal line behind the person with the ball. As the ball is passed backwards the person who had possession peels off from the top of the line back behind the ball and the diagonal looping back to the right or left. Lather, rinse, repeat. I imagine the aerial view resembles a rotating hive moving at angles. This is all happening while the opposing team is coming on in an attempt to gain the ball by brutal means.

Rugby has other idiosyncrasies. When the ball goes out of bounds (out of touch) it is returned into play with a throw-in similar to soccer. However, the reception of the ball is… well, the two teams line up perpendicularly to the touch line. This creates a “tunnel”. The ball is thrown down the middle into the air as burly people raise smaller people up into the air to catch it. This is known as lifting, and it looks totally wild – a celebration that the ball has come back into play.

When we did full field drills I played flanker. I believe this is the position that I've been waiting for all my sporting life. I'm actively encouraged to hit people. I'm not stuck in the front of the scrum. As soon as the scrum's out I peel off lickity split to chase after the ball in support of my team. I hit people after they’ve hit one of my teammates, or I receive the ball and either pass it off smartly or get hit by an opponent when I will hand the ball back to a teammate while I'm on the ground. This running into and tackling of people for forward motion is called a ruck. A ruck is what you’d get if play didn’t stop after the ball was downed in American football.

I’ve heard that soccer is a game for gentlemen played by hooligans and rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen. I know a fair amount of good hearted ruggers, and I’ll say there’s something to that.