The Importance of Rugby Culture – Part 1

These two posts are a bit off the beaten path for Your Scrumhalf Connection but I found them passionate and full of truth. They are worth a read and further discussion.

Update (6/18):
Notes from the author Scott Stelting: The essay was originally written in October 2005. This is significant in the references made to NZ rugby, and to rugby in the US as well.

This article was just passed through the Tulsa Rugby google group and was written by a Tulsa Old Boy living in NZ currently. With everything OU Rugby has given me over the past 7 years and allowed me to experience I felt I should share it as the first two pages or so directly reflected me back to how I got started playing rugby and the people who are the reason I kept playing despite being a grad student who was never eligible for the college side… But now that I’ve found a home where I was able to play rugby competitively, not a day goes by I don’t remember what put me here, and even taking the field against old mates when OU and Tulsa meet, just makes me that much prouder of where I came from in this great game
-Nick “Chief KickingProp” Blackman

Why is this game so important? I have waited for an explanation for twenty years. Time after time you see people return to this fine old game after a divorce, or a lost job, or after a death. People return to the game after a crisis in their life and when they reevaluate what is really important to them. They return to this game when they get tired of chasing money. We see them again when they get bored and remember that they haven’t ever had as much fun as when they were around this game.

It seems that when we have lost everything that’s important to us, we rush back to the game. It must be for the support. It must be for the belonging and the surroundings of friends. Maybe it is the acceptance and understanding that only other misfits can offer. It remains evident that this game is more than sport.

Sport alone is not strong enough to continue to call us back. When we leave the game for family…it calls to us. When we leave the game for job obligations…it calls to us. What is it that brings us back? The minute our obligations change, or life gets rough, or we just get bored with being grown ups, we go back to this game. It is more than a sport. In some ways it is like an addiction or affliction that is permanent. You never get over it. Rugby is the Hepatitis and Heroin of our lives. It’s permanent.

I am a proud carrier and vector of this drug/disease mood altering, narcotic, anti-depressant, chronic affliction. It was given to me easily. I had no natural immunity to the infection. Actually, I needed the disease. It was the piece I was missing. Much like a vision born through a great fever, the experience of catching the infection changed my life from that point forward. There was no going back. Although many times I have wondered what would have become of me had I not contracted this infection, it is wasted effort to consider it. Ole’ Willie Nelson strums it up with “There’s nothing I can do about it now”. I’m sure that my life has been more colorful and adventurous because of the infection and its “a waste of time and tears” to consider it otherwise.

So what is it that makes this game more than a game? It is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. We are drawn to this thing, this undescribed “Quality”, that we find nowhere else. Is it just a game? It cannot be just a game and have so many benefits to a culture and a society.

At the High School level I have seen troubled young men given purpose and saved from an avoidable trip to prison. Parents and counselor alike have been overjoyed with the gift that rugby gives teenagers. The British used the game for soldier management. The Kiwi’s use the
game for national pride, tourism, and the benefit of the native Maori’s. At the youth level in New Zealand, boys and girls play together in a touch format for fun. Competition and contact are saved for later when the kids and the Parents have been properly trained in what is most important. No screaming coaches, parents, and fights with referee’s because the first step is formatted for fun and respect. The game helps raise the children.

The game has large social and cultural importance.

The thing that drew me to the game originally was the culture. It was the society of misfits that collectively gathered to become greater. We became greater by finding that there were others like us that did not fit into the rigid set of social options given to us. We had known from early on that there MUST be something out there for us. Then we met our mentors. We were drawn to these magnetic individuals that were the Founders. They too were misfits: Too rebellious to blend into the mainstream. They were their own men and women. To have met them was a privilege. My memory of these icons spans the road-trips and tournaments that we attended. Wherever we traveled I met still more of these fully alive spirits. They were rough, combative, hysterical, loyal, frugal, and absolutely FREE. It was their freedom that really captured the imagination. These Folks drove crap cars full of kit bags, and lived the “evangelism of freedom” through rugby. These gypsies were the ones that finished raising me.

I miss these personality types. They were extroverts, with big hearts, big ideas, and a spontaneous, infectious ability to find the fun. The world was a playground to be experienced and enjoyed. Beaming grins lit the way. Bruises, stories, and high hi-jinx littered the passing. Every old rugger has the same story. They are told with different names in different places. The consistency of the stories tells me that these are not the romantic recollections of the old days. These are actual historical records that point to a different culture. It was simply a different culture then.

History is very clear. Each culture determines what is expected and what is intolerable. This older rugby culture had very different concepts that defined sanity and acceptability from what we see today.

In all of this freeness and domestic anarchy there was a code of conduct. Maybe there is no honor among thieves, but their was honor among those ruggers. New players were instantly welcomed into the club. They were verbally, physically, and from the club as a group…welcomed. There was no doubt whether you were going to be given a chance. Every rookie was given the benefit of the doubt first. Then they were given a fair shot to learn this game through a readily given philosophy lesson by the current players. The emphasis was the philosophy of the game not the strategy. In the bar, at the pitch, in the car, between the halves, we learned the differences of this game. It
was an education about the higher virtues of the game that we were to aspire too. We took our lessons first in camaraderie. We took our lessons in support.

Toughness was installed several ways. First, it was a culture of denial. Denial of sleep, food, comforts like clean shorts. If you had a ‘need’, it had to wait. We would get around to sleep, food, and water later. Have a beer, shut your mouth, take the pitch, mate. No, you don’t need a shower. Yes, we put eight people in a hotel room all the time. Its perfectly logical to load Six people in a tiny Toyota, facing a six hour road trip with nothing but a bag of jerseys and a
case of beer. Mental toughness was learned on the road. It maybe uncomfortable on the way over, but it takes real toughness to get back.

Secondly came the physical toughness of Mandatory B game participation, no substitutions, and tournament formats all forcing us to play five or six full length matches over two days and nearly no sleep. Toughness is a philosophy. The behavior was enforced by quickly making fun of anyone who complained about it. I was made fun of a lot for my complaints of soreness, being tired, and wanting to sit out a game. Maybe it was tough love, maybe it was education, but the group would not allow a weak link. The culture was strong. There were simple requirements to be involved in this game. Toughness, both physical and especially mental, was taught, demanded and enforced.
Peer pressure was utilized for the strengthening of the behavior. It was also used for other things, but we’ll keep that quiet since it happened in Vegas. Small island rules: what happens on the road stays on the road. Peer pressure was a two edged sword. Sharp on one side, dull on the other.

Every team had a player or two that were a pain in the ass. They were unaccountable, disrespectful knuckleheads, that posed as rugby players. I remember that they wore clean jerseys and cologne. We made fun of them. Mostly they were never any good because they were
too self absorbed to learn the game. None of them became students of the game. Too much work for a poser. They were made fun of by the strongest and weakest of the group. They were shamed and mocked. They were tolerated and allowed to stay but at a cost to their public pride. Even the lowest rookie could take a crack at them knowing that the other mates had their back. In the equation of cultural importance, The lowest common denominator was respect, not athletic ability. Disrespect by an individual was mirrored with disrespect from the team. We would rather lose with our mates than win with a bad apple.

As I look back I can clearly see when winning at all costs became more important that preserving our culture. It was when we started playing and tolerating disrespectful athletes. We replaced the advocates of our culture with athletes who were bigger, stronger and faster. We
lost our culture when we began allowing a bad seed in our midst because they could help us win. The irony is that they cost us more games than they ever helped win. They destroyed the culture.

The accidental wisdom of those earlier clubs and cultures was in demanding respect from its participants. Respect was demanded for the game, the laws of the game, the referees, the teammates, the opposition, and the privileges of being a part of this culture. Everything else fell into place when the foundation of respect was protected. When the foundation of respect was left unprotected so we could win more games… the old culture slowly withered. This is the sadness you can see in every old rugger when they talk of what was lost.

We got what we deserved in a way. We begged for people to come play this great game; and they did. Beggars cant be choosers; and we didn’t.

By suggesting that it was a different culture back then; several things become clearer to me. I am able to see why I am disappointed with the current game and how we got here. Firstly, the source of our disappointment with the current rugby is not with the current players but with the current culture. Secondly, the current players did not get the benefits we had. They had coaches, and strategy, and video cameras, but they did not have mentors. They simply did not have the
group of strong personalities to train them. They were taught about the sport but not about the game. I cannot expect them to live the philosophy that they never learned. Their culture is shallower because their education was shallower. Culture can be taught, but not without the old ones.

Culture is important because it is the living philosophy of our society. Culture is a living thing. It changes, adapts, and evolves. Our culture needs to be protected and fed better. Ask the Old Ones.

This is the second part. There are a few left to go. I’m taking the long circuitous way to the point. My hope is to help the current players see what holds them back. I hope to let the old ones know
what happened while they were gone. This is just a flint to spark the thought process. Are you tender?

–Stelting

Part 2 can be found here…

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