by putting a copy of it on the current Sunbury Centre. So here it is with a few modifications and additions. Apologies to those who've read it before.
Rugby America (previously a Letter from America).
I’m sure you all know that many years ago, William Webb Ellis picked up a football at some posh school and a new sport was born and he had a trophy named after him. What you may not be aware however is that as the game spread across the globe long before there was a second code, it emerged as a popular sport on the west coast of America, thanks in part to English soldiers and colonists. Unfortunately, it appears that the rules were a bit muddled and that the participants found it too complex, so many of them drifted away to other past-times (cattle rustling maybe). Major changes were made to the rules as the scrum was replaced by a line of scrimmage and attempts were made to emphasize the free-running game.
In 1905 though some particularly brutal pictures of a violent game between Swarthmore and Pennsylvania caused such a stir that the then President Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban the game unless more changes were made to lower the brutality of it. This sounds a little harsh, but digging around a little more I found out that in the collegiate ‘football’ season that year 23 players died of injuries sustained on the field. The game’s brutality was due to the nature of what we would probably call a maul. When a player carrying the ball hit the line of scrimmage, players on both teams were said to pull, tug, crash and punch the pile of players to move it in the proper direction. Beatings in the pile or maul were part of the game and many collegiate teams had been accused of hiring railroad workers and thugs to play for their ‘amateur’ teams. Under the threat of abolition though the colleges bowed to pressure and with the introduction of the forward pass and other rule changes the game of rugby died off in the USA. Within a few years the game more closely resembled the ‘Football’ that they now play with 4 downs to make 10 yards, long passes down field, punts, field goals, timeouts and penalties for violent or dangerous play like grabbing an opponent by the helmet guard or ‘holding’ them. By 1922 professional teams were playing in the NFL and college football was no longer of interest to the majority of Americans.
Rugby seems to have resurfaced in the 1960s again in the colleges of North America and has been steadily growing ever since. It has recently been referred to as the fastest growing sport in America (but is probably a long, long way behind Football, Baseball, Basketball, Soccer and Hockey as currently the most popular).
Everyone knows that George 'Dubya' Bush was a rugby player, as was Bill Clinton.
Spot the nutter!
Is it true that the U.S.A. won a gold medal at rugby in the Olympics?
Yes, it's true; the US did win the Olympic gold medal for rugby last time it was competed for and so is the current Olympic champion! In fact the US has won the last two rugby gold medals at the Olympics. Here are the details.
In Paris in 1924 three teams entered the Olympics Rugby tournament - France, USA and Romania. Each country played two games. Both France and USA beat Romania, who were awarded the bronze medal. France won 59-3, scoring 13 tries. The USA then defeated Romania 39-0. The final was played at Colombes stadium, Paris on 18 May 1924 and the USA took the gold with a 17-3 victory infront of 30,000. The match finished in uproar, when Gideon Nelson, one of the reserves, was flattened by a walking stick. The American anthem was jeered, and rugby ceased at the Olympics.
Before that in 1920 in Antwerp only two teams entered - USA and France. The USA caused a shock by winning the only match 8-0 to take the gold medal.
Arguably the most famous American rugby player is Mark Bingham who died on September 11th 2001 on board United Airlines Flight 93. United 93 was the plane that didn't hit its intended terrorist target that day and many theories suggest that Mark was one of those passengers responsible for making sure that the plane went down in an empty field just outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The 9/11 Commission's official report states that pilot LeRoy Homer, flight attendants CeeCee Lyles and Sandra Bradshaw and passengers Todd Beamer, Tom Burnett, Andrew Garcia, Jeremy Glick, Richard Guadagno and Mark Bingham, among others, fought back against the hijackers.
Mark Bingham of the San Francisco Fog Rugby Team (right)
In a tribute to Mark Bingham, the International Gay Rugby Association renamed their annual tournament The Bingham Cup and the trophy is played for by teams of any sexual persuasion from around the world.
Mark Bingham wrote:When I started playing rugby at the age of 16, I always thought that my interest in other guys would be an anathema -- completely repulsive to the guys on my team -- and to the people I was knocking the shit out of on the other team. I loved the game, but knew I would need to keep my sexuality a secret forever. I feared total rejection.
As we worked and sweated and ran and talked together this year, I finally felt accepted as a gay man and a rugby player. My two irreconcilable worlds came together. Now we've been accepted into the union and the road is going to get harder. We need to work harder. We need to get better. We have the chance to be role models for other gay folks who wanted to play sports, but never felt good enough or strong enough. More importantly, we have the chance to show the other teams in the league that we are as good as they are.
Gay men weren't always wallflowers waiting on the sideline. We have the opportunity to let these other athletes know that gay men were around all along -- on their little league teams, in their classes, being their friends.
{sorry the article is a bit disjointed, it's what comes from trying to edit/add to something that you wrote two years ago - dp}
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