Rugby Starts – doesn’t Stop

By Adam Waldorf – Staff Writer

Rugby is not a reporter’s game. It’s physical and downright rough at times. It’s not a game for someone used to sitting in a newsroom late at night writing stories for a newspaper. So it was a surprise that I came to be playing rugby on a sweltering and wet summer day, falling on my face in the mud and generally showing off my lack of athletic skills.
I was there because GPC’s newest club sport is rugby, supplementing the varsity sports of baseball, softball, soccer, basketball and tennis.
“I just love the sport and I wanted to create an opportunity for other people that love the sport at GPC, so we can all get together and compete against these other schools,” Renan Oliveira, the club’s founder and president, said.
These other schools include four-year, Division I colleges with established clubs, such as University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, and Kennesaw State University. The team has yet to win a game against these clubs, but is becoming more competitive, leading Georgia Tech at the half of their game against them at their last tournament before an eventual loss.
Originally, the team was supporting itself, spending over $1,000 out of pocket to enter tournaments and purchase uniforms, according to Oliveira. Just recently, they were allowed to apply for funds from Clarkston campus’s student activity funds.
Rugby can be described as an unholy amalgamation of American football and soccer. Like soccer, the game consists of two uninterrupted halves with a limited number of player substitutions. Like American football, there is an oblong ball and teams have a set number of chances to score before the ball changes hands.
Perhaps the most glaring comparison with American football is the level of contact. Pretty much the same rules apply to a player hitting a ball carrier in rugby as they do in American football and violent collisions are a norm. Unlike football, though, rugby players wear little or no padding. They also cannot throw the ball forward, having to pitch it back. The rule is one of the hardest things for new players to get used to. “They had this football mentality where they just pass the ball and move forward,” Coach Jorge Novoa explained.
“In rugby you have a lot more contact,” Oliveira said when asked about the difference between rugby and soccer.
According to the South Wales Osteopathic Society, as many as one in four rugby players will be injured during a season. They also report that the rate of injury is three times higher than that of soccer. Rugby players make between 20 and 40 tackles during a game, leading to the high injury rates.
“They’ve had to cart people off on stretchers every tournament,” Chip Smith, the team’s Georgia Rugby Union representative, said regarding the roughness of the game.
Over the summer, the rugby club has been playing rugby 7s, a variation on the more grueling rugby fifteens. In rugby 7s, there are only 7 players to a side, as opposed to the usual fifteen, and halves are 7 minutes with a 1 minute break in between, whereas fifteens games are 2 halves of 40 minutes each. In the fall, the rugby club will switch to playing rugby fifteens.
Having to have fifteen players, plus backups, for each game may be a hard requirement for the club to meet. Practices have been sparsely and inconsistently attended. “A lot of people are not familiar with rugby, so it’s kind of hard to get members,” Oliveira said.