Well, the Super Bowl has come and gone; football is over for this season. What now? For metroplex fans craving some rough and tumble action, there’s a new game in town: Major League Rugby.
Rugby may be unfamiliar to many in Texas, where football has reigned as king for decades. But now that DFW is home to a major league rugby team for the first time, I thought it was time to learn a little more about it.
I had the opportunity to attend the inaugural home game for the newly formed Dallas Jackals rugby team on February 19, as they faced off against the Houston SaberCats. It was actually the Jackals’ third game of the season, but their first at home.
Before heading out to Choctaw Stadium (the repurposed Globe Life Park) for the game, I did a little research online to learn the basics of the sport. I also picked up a little history in the process.
Rugby originated 2,000 years ago with the ancient Romans. During the reign of the Tudor dynasty of kings in England, this “devilish pastime” was banned due to the high incidence of fatalities and injuries. Modern rugby began to take shape in the late 1700s in the English town of Warwickshire.
Rugby became a Summer Olympic sport in 1900, and the U.S. took home the gold medal in rugby in both the 1920 and 1924 Olympics.
The game we know in America as football derived many of its elements from rugby, such as the size and shape of the ball, the shape of the “pitch,” or playing field, and the scoring zone and goalposts at each end of the pitch. The idea of a scrimmage line in football evolved from the “scrum” in rugby. (More about that later.)
In the early 1900s, as football began to gain popularity in America, rugby fell by the wayside.
Recently, however, rugby has been making a comeback. The sport was reintroduced at the Summer Olympics in 2016, and in 2017, Major League Rugby (MLR) was formed in North America, hosting its first playing season in 2018. The MLR consists of twelve teams in the U.S. and one team based in Canada.
Rugby is a contact sport requiring two teams of 15 players each, but each team is allowed eight additional members as backup/substitute players. The players’ jerseys are numbered 1-15 to correspond with the position they play on the field. There are eight “forward” positions and seven “backs.”
The game’s objective is to earn the most points by scoring “tries” or kicking goals during the 80 minutes of play. Players move the ball down the pitch by running with it or drop-kicking it. The ball can be passed from one player to another but never in a forward direction.
A try is similar to a touchdown in football and is worth 5 points. The player runs the ball into the scoring zone and touches it down on the ground.
A conversion kick is worth 2 points and is attempted after a team scores a try. The ball must pass through the uprights in the scoring zone, just like the extra point kick in football. The kicker can choose to drop-kick the ball or use a tee.
A drop goal is made by drop-kicking the ball through the uprights during open play. It counts for 3 points.
A penalty goal is also worth 3 points. The referee awards a penalty kick attempt when the opposing team commits a foul.
One referee and two touch judges enforce the rules of the game.
The game struck me as an amalgamation of soccer, football, basketball, and free-for-all, a high-contact sport with lots of tackling, pushing, shoving, and strong-arming. I vividly recall seeing one player grab another player by the face and shove him to the ground. Yikes!
Yet, despite the brutal physicality of the sport, I was surprised that very few players were wearing any visible protective gear. Protective headgear, known as scrum caps, are optional and are “ideal for protecting the ears and reducing superficial head injuries, including lacerations and abrasions,” according to a report from the Brain Injury Law Center.
However, scrum caps do little to protect the players from concussions and serious brain injuries. “The risk of sustaining a concussion in rugby is higher when compared to other contact sports, such as ice hockey or American football,” the report stated.
I also noticed the rugby players really get up-close and personal with each other. During a lineout, two players will grab a teammate and hoist him high in the air to snag the ball as it is thrown into play from the sidelines.
The scrum, short for scrummage, is another such close-contact maneuver. From the stands, the scrum has the appearance of a giant crab inching across the field. It is a method of restarting play after an infringement or after the ball has gone out of play.
During a scrum, the eight forwards on a team will lock themselves together in a tight formation in three rows and go head-to-head against the eight forwards on the opposing team. Each team pushes in opposite directions while attempting to move the ball with their feet from the scrum huddle out into the open so that one of their remaining seven team members can take possession of it.
I also noticed that the time clock does not seem to be a part of the game strategy in rugby the way that it is in American football. According to FloRugby.com, “The clock runs continuously, as it does in soccer, save for when there is a stoppage for an injury or for instant replay.”
Therefore, when a team scores or the ball goes out of bounds, the clock keeps ticking. When a player is tackled, he must immediately release the ball so that play can continue.
New fans to the sport must learn to adjust to this clock situation, as it leaves very little time to tilt your head back and take a swig of your beer; you could very easily miss some exciting action on the pitch.
There is a brief clock stoppage between the two 40-minute halves of the game and a short water break during each half.
When the game clock runs out of time, that does not mean the game is over, as it would in football. In rugby, play continues until the team that has the last possession of the ball scores, kicks it out of play, or commits an infraction.
This time-clock rule turned out to be significant in the February 19 game. It was an exciting match, as the Dallas Jackals and the Houston SaberCats traded the lead several times.
At one point in the second half, Dallas was ahead 33-21, and I thought it was a shoo-in from there, but Houston went on a scoring run, tying the score at 33 -33 in the last few minutes of the game. When the clock hit the 80:00 minute mark, Houston still had possession of the ball and managed to score a try at 81:13, winning the game 38-33.
It was an unfortunate loss for the Jackals, but they played their hearts out and gave more than 3,000 fans an exciting evening to remember.
I’m pretty sure I won’t be playing rugby myself any time soon, but I will very likely attend another Jackals game in the near future. It’s a fun and inexpensive way to spend an evening. With tickets starting at $20.00, that’s a real entertainment bargain in this town.
The Jackals’ next home game is Saturday, March 12. Why not go out and show some love to our newest home team?