Local rugby club plays for national title
Bryan Savelio played football at the University of Florida. He remembers those road trips to other Southeastern Conference schools, remembers the bus rides from the team hotel to the stadiums of Tennessee and Louisiana State and Mississippi, remembers the opposing fans.
“You would have a 5-year-old kid standing on the side of a street with his grandmother flipping you off,” Savelio said. “With rugby, they still flip you off, but then everyone goes out for beers afterward.”
I’m fairly certain he wasn’t talking about drinking with 5-year-olds. But it’s rugby, so don’t hold me to it.
That’s the thing about watching Savelio and his Las Vegas Blackjacks teammates practice. Many of the stereotypes attached to the world’s second-most-played game vanishes with each rolling maul.
Which either means a team constantly changing its point of attack while going forward or a new strategy for teenage girls to meet the Jonas Brothers.
It might be true that rugby players still hold the best parties, that women flock to them (the players more than the parties), that there have been times on the pitch when clothing was more optional than required.
But here’s the part that gets lost in all the craziness: The fitness level required to compete at a high level is unbelievable. It’s like being a heavy machine operator — not for those weak of nerve or lower backs.
It is said you could run between six and seven miles in an 80-minute rugby match, the thought of which likely would send a football lineman into cardiogenic shock.
Timeouts?
What timeouts?
Las Vegas today will be represented in the Final Four of the USA Rugby National Club Championship in Glendale, Colo., where a club founded here in 1975 hopes to win its first Division I title.
For those in rugby, it’s the madness without Dick Vitale, a 64-team tournament that has been pared to these semifinal matchups: Las Vegas against Pearl City, Iowa, and Atlanta against Aspen, Colo. The winners and losers will meet Sunday to determine the top four places.
Rick Coome didn’t know where things would lead 34 years ago. He was just fascinated with rugby and the camaraderie it seemed to create over other sports. So he and a few friends formed the Las Vegas Rugby Union Football Club. Today, they are known as the Blackjacks.
If soccer is the world’s game, rugby should be considered 1A. Billions watched the 2007 World Cup on television. The Blackjacks’ roster includes players from Ireland, England, France, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Australia and New Zealand.
But one thing about the sport crosses all cultural barriers: If you can’t run, kick, pass and tackle, you can’t play.
“This isn’t about training for short bursts and then getting back in a huddle to rest,” said Coome, now 59 and until recently having played for the club’s ‘Old Boys’ team. “You never stop moving in rugby. If you get popped, you get popped. Play on.”
Which brings us to one of the more basic differences between football and rugby, one that often makes players of the former think twice about helping to form a scrum. The running.
Savelio prepped at Basic High School, where on the first day of football practice his coach told him to stand with the defensive tackles.
He remained there through his high school days, two years of junior college and two more at Florida. But like most of Samoan descent, he grew up hearing about and watching his native land’s most popular sport.
Why do you think so many college football coaches flock to the islands for players? Kids not only own natural size but also the footwork and ball skills learned from rugby.
“With rugby, this is the first time I have carried the ball in years,” said Savelio, a 29-year-old husband and father to three. “The fitness part has definitely been the toughest after football. My first match, I was gassed in 10 minutes. People have no idea how much running is involved until they try it.”
P.G. Wodehouse wrote that in rugby, “Each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench.”
Funny stuff. But there also is no denying the sense of friendship it creates. It was Thursday night when the Blackjacks gathered in a circle at Sunset Park, all kinds of nations and languages and histories represented, and spoke how one heart, one echo from Las Vegas would be heard in all their lands come today’s match.
“Winning the (national championship) would be massive, fantastic, phenomenal,” said first-year coach Jason Kelly, a New Zealand native who said he received his first pair of rugby boots at age 2. “Something we would all remember the rest of our lives. These guys have jobs, families. They work all day and then train two nights a week and all Saturday. They put in the time because they love the game.
“If you’re in it, you’re sort of in it for life.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 702-383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
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