Local Rugby Squad Digs Into Brooklyn

On a recent Tuesday night men large and small are sprinting, grunting, crab walking, shouting and sweating under the harsh halide lights of the Red Hook ball fields. Passing around a bloated oblong ball, these thirty or so players are practicing rugby, a game that most Americans have almost no knowledge of, outside of stumbling on to an Australian Rules Football match—rugby‘s closest relative—while late-night channel surfing.

Welcome to rugby Brooklyn-style, courtesy of the Brooklyn Rugby Football Club. An amateur club that competes year round in the Empire Geographic Union, a federation of 100 Northeastern teams, Brooklyn Rugby fields men’s and women’s teams, including one in the EGU’s NYC D-3 Men’s division.

Tomorrow at 2pm Brooklyn Rugby’s D-3 squad (3-3) plays it’s seventh and final fall game at Fort Hamilton Military Base against a winless (0-6) Long Island side. Holding down the fourth and final spot, a win guarantees Brooklyn a first round playoff match next spring against an undefeated Montauk squad that already beat them 46-10 earlier this year.

A Contact Sport Unlike Any Other In America

With a total of five substitutions allowed per 15-player side, rugby is a game of endurance. Over an 80-minute match with a single break for halftime, action is continuous on a field wider and longer than that used in American football.

Unlike other full contact sports, the men and women of the Brooklyn Rugby don’t wear pads. They don’t use helmets, except for the occasional scrum cap, meant to protect players’ ears – with little regard for their brain pans. Players rarely leave the game voluntarily, usually succumbing only when an injury is so painful they can no longer stand.

And, they don’t get paid. Those who join regular Saturday games played all over the Northeast—and occasionally far from their Fort Hamilton home base—do so strictly for the love of a sport that thrills them almost perhaps as much as it pains them.

For anyone who’s actually heard of rugby, the term “scrum” is perhaps most familiar. According to Learn-Rugby.com, a scrum occurs after a foul when “a pack of players from each team face each other and bind in to form the “tunnel,” into which the non-offending team will put the ball. The two teams will push against one another until the ball exits the rear of a pack; the scrum half or eight man will retrieve the ball and put it into play.”

While the rugby ball is oblong like it’s American football cousin, it’s swollen enough that two hands are needed to marshal its bulk. Yet when a team is in full flight, passing the ball along the line formation that appears to resemble a series of desperation heaves, the ball flies around the pitch until a single player, at the tail end of the attacking players on the field, looks to “ground” the ball in the opposing team’s “in-goal area” for five points.

An International Bond Through Sport

According to P.J. Kinsella, the club’s public relations manager and squad member for the past two years, Brooklyn Rugby players hail from nations as far away as New Zealand and as close as Canada, and include a smattering of the Caribbean (Trinidad & Tobago), South America (Brazil, Colombia, Guyana and Peru), Europe (France, Ireland, England and Russia) and tiny (Fiji, Hong Kong).

Kinsella is an evangelist for his sport, diligently sending out media releases and tending to the club’s various social media outlets, all in the name of growing the sport he and his mates can’t seem to live without.

Almost all of Brooklyn’s roster was introduced to rugby in college, where they embraced a sport that is both elegant and brutal at the same time.

“I started playing rugby in college at West Chester University,” said team captain Mike Reilly a compact thirty-something who looks like he could run through a brick wall. “I had run track in high school but was always looking for something more physical.”

Reilly, who has been with the team for five years, cites the usual “love of competition” about playing a demanding sport for fun, but then details why rugby inspires such fanatical devotion among a select few.

“It’s unique from other games. You’re using your hands, your feet, you’re kicking, you’re passing. [There’s] a lot of teamwork,” he said. “Any time you’ve got 15 players on each team, you’ve got 30 on the field, it’s a lot of precision that [has to] goes on.”

“Brooklyn Rugby for me has been the perfect place to play competitive rugby while also having fun,” said Erika Hernandez, captain of the Brooklyn Rugby women’s team, by email. “I played very competitively in college and wanted a high level of play without an insane commitment. Brooklyn has provided me with just that.”

“Our women’s club has grown to take down some tough teams,” said Hernandez, a California native and club member since 2010. “We are a group of talented girls that play good rugby and also have a great time off the pitch. It’s the perfect combination.”

Dan Newcombe, Brooklyn Rugby’s player coach, inherited his rugby passion from his English father. After a post-college stint in Germany, which of course included rugby, Newcombe returned to his native Brooklyn six years ago to help lead the borough’s only Rugby side as a hooker, “a key player in the scrum generally being regarded as its leader,” according to learn-rugby.com.

Last year with Newcombe at the helm, Brooklyn Rugby defeated Montauk 35-19 in the 2013 season opener, resulting in some ill will that perhaps translated into the large margin of defeat this year. Newcombe is confident about a spring playoff match-up against his division’s best side.

“We’ll give them a good run for it,” predicted Brooklyn’s coach.

The Only Constant Is That Players Always Change

Reilly, Brooklyn’s captain, said that his team’s biggest challenge was consistency. Brooklyn Rugby’s best players are often foreign exchange students in New York for a year, causing the club to constantly integrate new players.

“Here, it’s kinda like pot luck,” said Reilly, who pointed out that on the last day of fall practice there are four or five new players milling about. “As soon as players get good enough to know each other, they’re gone.”

Which is why the rugby fraternity is so important. “One of the first things I did in moving to Brooklyn was to look up a club,” said Reilly. “When you move to any city in the US, if you join a club you instantly have 40 to 50 new friends.”

The New Jersey native thought he’d be in Brooklyn for a year or two and now it’s turned into five. “This club is a lot of the reason why I want to stay.”

PHOTO CAPTION: Brooklyn Rugby Football Club in a scrum
PHOTO CREDIT: P.J. Kinsella, Brooklyn Rugby Football Club