LOCAL ANGLES: INSATIABLE APPETITE SEEKS VIOLENT BALLET

As you read this, I'm in Dallas for a mini-vacation of sorts. I call the three-day trip a vacation only because I've brought my wife and three children along. The real purpose of the trek is to feed my insatiable appetite for perhaps the purest sport in America today: rugby.

My team, the Kohlfeld Scorpions of Cape Girardeau, is competing for the Western Rugby Union title and bragging rights as the best junior division rugby club in a seven-state region. The winner heads to nationals. But if this weekend's trip was to a less-prestigious tournament between less-successful teams, I would greet the event with the same enthusiasm and glad anticipation.

You see, rugby is more than a game. It truly is a passion for those who play it, year after grueling year, their inevitable scrapes and bruises graduating into permanent scars.

When a spectator first views rugby, he typically is struck by the chaos and physical brutality of the game. The action barely subsides for occasional injuries as bodies are thrown together in what is, to all appearances, a non-stop melee.

Only a masochistic lunatic would play such a sport, right?

Not so. Although some undoubtedly fit that description, most rugby players are the kind of people you meet each day. Because most American players began the sport while in college, many are doctors, lawyers, even accountants. More than 90 percent of the rugby players in the United States have at least some college education. Among the members of the Scorpions is a chiropractor, a construction contractor, an engineer, computer hacks, several students and a newspaper editor.

Most children in America are reared in team sports that are acceptable to their parents: football, basketball, baseball, soccer. But unlike in other countries, rugby football is not available to most U.S. kids in grade or high school. Although American youth can develop their competitive instinct through early participation in athletics, most are unable to progress to a mature level of competition beyond high school or college.

Golf, softball and bowling are some of the sports men play late in life, but for many, these games lack the physical demands and ferocity they crave. Rugby, on the other hand, encompasses the best in competitive athletics. The game, which derived from soccer and is the father of American football, combines physical contact with graceful teamwork.

As in basketball, passing the ball to a supporting player is an art, and setting up the score is as thrilling as crossing the try line yourself. As in soccer, a player will kick the ball between defenders or down field to a more strategic playing area. As in football, an effective tackler often can change the course of the game with a jarring hit that forces a poorly thrown ball.

Every player is able to perform each of these skills. None are restricted to only blocking for someone else or defending a goal, while others seem to have all the fun. As the spectator begins to learn the game, he no longer sees bedlam, but a meticulously choreographed ballet of elegant violence -- 80 minutes of gentlemanly combat.

But rugby's most unique feature is the fraternity that's cultivated between players. A profound bond develops among players who pit themselves against one another in such a demanding sport. And when the games ends, each team offers a rousing cheer for its opponent and the referee before joining prior enemies in raucous post-game revelry.

My wife doesn't particularly like rugby. Between her husband's aches and pains, occasional broken body parts and the traditional rugby revelry, I guess there's not much for her to like. But she understands my love for the sport. For critics unable to comprehend why grown men would partake of what seems such folly, I offer the words of Theodore Roosevelt, who could have been describing rugby when he said:

It is not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly and who knows the great enthusiasms; who errs and falls short again and again; and who at best knows the triumph of high achievement, and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

I'm hoping for the best this weekend, but if we're defeated, it will be at the hands of those who also "strive valiantly and who know the great enthusiasms"... of rugby.

~Jay Eastlick is night editor of the Southeast Missourian.