The Mad Dogs practice at Ascot Park in Kingston. The weather is grungy and sordid when I arrive, there’s no light on the field save for the beaming brights coming from the cars of the fathers of the pee wee team football that practices next to the Mad Dogs.
The Mad Dogs’ practice field is slightly uneven and is growing slicker every second as the player’s cleats chaw up the grass and bring forth the mud. The sun has left the field entirely, and with the headlights now beaming solely on the pee wee football team, who are pounding out some top notch U-10 football, the Mad Dogs roll into a full field, low contact mini scrimmage. Even though it’s a practice, it’s a pleasure to watch; rugby warm up isn’t some laconic breezy pre game ritual like batting practice or a football walk through. It’s not as though you can play rugby every day, and these men know it. They fling the ball with skill and advance up, down, and across the field with the same zeal that every varsity coach wishes their athletes would use and pushes them with totalitarian management and punitive windsprints. That’s the difference between younger athletes and these men. Kids can go out every day and whip a ball around, kids can mess around on the field and give twenty percent when they need to give one hundred, kids think that they have all the time in the world to play. Men know that free time is a right, men know that longevity is a right, and men know that athletics is a right almost as sacred as anything. And so they blast around the field in the rain, all of them. Gunning for the ball, setting up scrums, inbounding, and, on occasion, talking serious trash.
The Mad Dogs play teams from Long Island; they travel all over, spreading the smash mouth gospel of the toughest sport on two feet. They have a champion youth team that does the same.
With the light gone, the Mad Dogs initiate the Land Shark drill, wherein two players on either side of the man in the middle bend forward into position. The man in the middle dashes back and forth between the two sets of men, and on each trip bashes both of their behinds with his biceps. This goes on until every man has gone and has a sore behind. Rugby is not a game for the feint of ass.
The practice concludes with a trip to the sleds. Every red blooded, football playing male knows what the sleds are; a simple, heavily weighted construct designed to improve blocking, shoving technique, and be the most egregious and seemingly unnecessary part of practice. Sleds, very often have foam stand ups that players crash into, about the same size as a crouching football player. Sometimes, to add a cute little touch, the foam stand ups have helmets painted onto them. Not the Mad Dogs’ sled. This sled is agro, made up completely of black pipes to support the thin blue pads on which the Mad Dogs push, the blue pads, and two enormous tires stacked on top of each other to add weight. They push the sled in the dead dark and pouring rain. When practice concludes, they head to a bar to recap the day of practice and recuperate from the three hours of butt wupping with friends who are in the exact same pain.
If soccer is Spider-Man, then Rugby is the Incredible Hulk. If basketball is Austin Powers, then Rugby is John Shaft. Rugby is hard and angry and full of curse words and bereft of any whiny cornerbacks or guards. The sport is growing virulently, it’s unstoppable. Along with Lacrosse and Mixed Martial Arts, rugby is one of the fastest growing sports in the U.S. If you ever witness a game, you’ll understand why. It’s mesmerizing in a way that football isn’t; it’s always moving and always grinding forward. Rugby feels like an anachronism, some barbarian contest from centuries ago, a testing ground to prove your toughness and worth. Rugby’s growing fast and is here to stay. If you want to join the movement, contact team Captain and President Nick Kryzwonos at nkrzy@yahoo.com and visit the team’s site at kingstonmaddogs.com
