It’s a strange and violent game, dating back to an English youth soccer match in 1823, when an 11 year-old boy named William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and started running. At the time, nobody seemed to realize that he had just created a new sport. It took a few years for the game to develop, but now the name of the town in which the fateful soccer match was held is synonymous with one of the roughest sports in existence: Rugby.

It took a little longer for the game to arrive at the Claremont Colleges, but Pomona played in the first rugby match in Southern California during the 1950s. It disappeared for a few decades, but has revived. During its 15 years under Coach Wally Cox, it has had great success, and in recent years the CCRFC (Claremont Colleges Rugby Football Club) has perennially gone to the league playoffs and nationals. They’re planning on doing it again this season.

Jeff Horwitz The CCRFC prepares for impact against the USC Trojans. The CCRFC went on to win 56-10.

With only one league loss in five years, the CCRFC is the cream of club rugby. The team had a momentary falter last season that cost them a league game against Cal Lutheran, which ultimately may have done the club more good than harm. "That loss really shook us up," said Eric Clement HMC ’01. "We realized we had to get serious, and we started playing excellent rugby." To finish up the season, they butchered their opponents in the final three league games, not allowing a single try (a score that only roughly equates to a touchdown) against them. The CCRFC kept on winning throughout the playoffs and into nationals, where the team was only defeated by Sacramento State in the finals.

This year looks extremely promising as well, despite the loss of a few key players. During the off-season, the club lost five graduating seniors and two other starters to other causes. Yet the team seems to have the depth to go on without them. "We’re lucky that this year we’ve got a really solid rookie group," Clement said in an interview. "We’re not happy about the losses in our lineup, but we’ve got the men to take their places."

Though the league season only starts this weekend, the team’s pre-season record substantiates Clement’s claim. The CCRFC has competed in a tournament and several scrimmages, emerging with a winning record. An encouraging sign of things to come was the team’s match against USC last weekend. According to Dan Clark ’02 "We romped on USC." The romp resulted in a 56-10 win.

Speaking of USC, Eric Clement said, "They’re a solid club, and they played pretty well. We brought a lot together that we hadn’t shown yet, but we made some serious mistakes too… This week in practice we’ll be tightening up our act before our first league match."

To understand what the CCRFC does, some basic rules are helpful: rugby is a fluid game played by two teams of 15 players on a pitch like a soccer field, with a goal post at each end. Players can run with the ball, make backward passes, and kick the ball forward. When the ball goes out of bounds or after a score, there is a scrum. Unlike football however, tackling in rugby does not finish when the player is "down," but rather when the person with the ball is held to the ground and can’t move. It is very much a team game, not relying heavily on any one position. "There’s no way for a single man to dominate the game. You have to have a supporting cast… take Michael Vick last year. In rugby you can’t do that," said Clement.

Beyond the actual game, there is a social side to rugby that is unusual among competitive sports: after each game, there’s a barbecue, the home team providing the keg. Clement says that this is one of the reasons he likes rugby so much: "I played football in high school. Before the game, you want to kill the other team. After the game, you still want to kill the other team. Rugby is different. You’ll make friends with the other team, unless some guy stepped on your face or something."

Having someone step on your face is not so uncommon. It’s a brutal game, particularly in the scrum. Put in the kindest terms, "your face gets all rubbed up." By the end of the season, regular ‘rubbings’ can do some damage–last season, I split the top and bottom of my ear, you know– the bottom wiggly part? It was loose… not pretty."

The league opener for the CCRFC is Saturday February 3, against Occidental. Their next home game is against Cal Lutheran, on the 24. All games are at 1pm on the rugby field.