This past week marked the highest practice turnout Guilford’s men’s rugby team has had this year. Six. While most Americans at least know of rugby and have some vague idea of how it’s played, the details drift into fuzzy obscurity after the assertion by many rugby laymen that “it hurts.” While the Guilford Rugby team meets for practice on the soccer fields every Tuesday through Friday at four p.m., they haven’t had too much opportunity to hurt each other this year. Lackluster attendance has made it impossible to have one full practice that hasn’t sooner or later become a game of Ultimate Frisbee.

“If people would just come out and play the game once, they’d realize what a great sport this is, and we wouldn’t have any problem getting people out here,” said John Hamer, captain of this year’s rugby efforts and overall rugby aficionado. Attendance at rugby practice is low because many players graduated last year and prospective players see American football as more widely respected than the wacky European game. Hamer isn’t worried: “even if no one shows up or we lose a game, we always have a good time.”

The Guilford team won their first match in four years last year against UNCG. This was not to be the end of last year’s rugby legacy, as the team went on to beat Catawba College also.

Despite the noted disadvantage that a standard rugby team has 15 players, and attendance has bottomed out with two die-hards on more than one occasion, games are still planned for this fall. It is expected that by that time both turnout and support will be higher. On Oct. 12 the first game will be played at UNCG, followed by a Nov. 10 game at Chapel Hill, and on Nov. 17 the season ends with a game against UNCW.

For another reason to play rugby, one could simply look at the fliers the team has put up to help recruiting, citing that the best thing about rugby is that after they win a game, they drink; and the second best thing is after they lose a game, they drink. It’s quite fortunate then that they have such a maxim; otherwise they would be drier than Carrie Nation.

As for people’s reasons not to go out for the team, said first-year Aaron Friedman, “they grab balls in rugby, don’t they?”

Yes, Aaron, they sure do.