It’s a Saturday afternoon in early November and 15 men in red-and-black jerseys with rubber buttons are huddled at one end of a vast grassy expanse at the Schiller Woods Forest Preserve. This spot is the home field, or paddock, of the Chicago Griffins Rugby Football Club. Murray “Muzza” Roeske, a six-foot-two, 210-pound New Zealander with the visage of a Viking, is in the middle, offering a few encouraging phrases to his teammates. “Fack all the rest of the games, mates…fack all that–our season ends here! Let’s leave it all on the facking paddock!…Let’s get nut up!”
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Though it’s been played in the States since at least the late 1800s, rugby still exists at the margins of American sport. It’s a brutal but highly technical game, and Americans who do get hooked tend to do so late but fall hard, attracted to both the intense physical challenge and the beery camaraderie. Brown, like many players, got into it in college, at the University of Iowa. Now 31 and a freelance corporate writer, he dedicates up to 25 hours a week to the Griffins during the season, which runs from August to November, plus playoffs from March to June. His teammates include lawyers, construction workers, investment bankers, engineers, a house painter, and a college student, among others, and they all put in at least 15 hours a week. “It’s hard to imagine what course my life would’ve taken if I hadn’t found rugby,” Brown says. “It’s the only outlet I can imagine that provides that kind of physical test, and the framework to challenge yourself on a regular basis. I didn’t play my first year out of college, and I always look at that as a year I can’t get back.”
Rugby in the States is governed by a single body called USA Rugby, which has four national club divisions for men who aren’t in college–III, II, I, and the elite Super League. (There’s also a national team, whose members are drawn from the club ranks.) There are 550 men’s clubs in the country, comprising some 17,000 players. Division I has 70 teams, 3 of them in the Chicago area: the Griffins, the West Side Condors, and the South Side Irish. Super League teams often play “friendlies” with Division I clubs, and the Griffins have a history of winning these games handily. Last year they beat the Super League’s Kansas City Blues 60-0, and this season they beat the Chicago Lions, the oldest rugby club in town, 23-13. For most of the match the Griffins were a man short–a player got red carded for punching one of the Lions.
In fact part of the reason the old boys wanted a building to go along with their bar was to have a place to store their ringers. Although U.S. rugby clubs are mostly made up of amateurs, each is allowed to beef up its roster with five foreign players. They’re often paid, and almost without exception they’re imported from countries where rugby is a bigger deal: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, the UK. More than 20 such players have been through the Griffins’ ranks through the years, and currently the club has 3: Murray “Muzza” Roeske, who’s 27, fellow New Zealander Scot Puckett, 31, and 28-year-old Australian Ryan Westaway. Westaway has his own place and takes a salary; the other two live rent free in two apartments above the bar and get between $200 and $300 a week in walking-around money. Typically the club also covers their airfare. This year the Griffins spent about $20,000 on the ringers.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Robert Drea.
