Friendship’s the Name of This Game : Rugby Players Say Camaraderie Makes Pain Worthwhile

SAN DIEGO —  Lucy’s is not a fancy bar, but rather a shoebox-shaped room across from something called Dago Choppers on Voltaire Street in Ocean Beach.

There’s not much to differentiate Lucy’s from other nondescript San Diego saloons, unless you stop by on a Monday night. The bar fills with battered and bruised and tattered and torn rugby players who just finished spending a couple of hours knocking each other about at nearby Robb Field.

As the amount of noise and empty bottles increase, the players usually can be found shoulder-to-shoulder singing a song everybody thinks they know the words to, but really don’t. But then again, they don’t really care.

Rugby is a game . . . but also an excuse for fellowship. The game may be played at Robb Field, but places like Lucy’s are part of the ritual.

“There’s more to rugby than the game, it’s like your own little family,” said Dan Dworsky, a member of the defending seven-a-side national champion Old Mission Beach Athletic Club. “It’s the camaraderie. And that goes around the world.”

OMBAC will defend its Michelob Pacific Coast Seven-a-Side Club Championship Saturday at Penn Field in Paradise Hills. Matches begin at 8 a.m., with the final scheduled for 3 p.m. The winner advances to the national championship tournament in Milwaukee Aug. 30.

The traditional rugby game has 15 players to a side. The seven-a-side game, usually referred to as sevens, differs from the traditional game in that it is faster and has more action. Both are played on a field 100 meters long and 60 meters wide.

Ask any rugby player why he plays and there will most likely be one answer:

“Camaraderie,” said lawyer Del Chipman after playing in a recent Monday night game at Robb Field. “That’s the only reason I play.”

Bob Watkins, a former OMBAC player and current president of the National Rugby Assn., offered a similar answer: “One of the aspects of rugby is it’s a social game. In football, you hear about your opponents, you see them in a game, but you really don’t meet them. In rugby, everything you committed on the field, is left on the field. The home team has to provide a meal and a beer for the visitors. That’s how the friendships are established and you keep them for the rest of your life.”

Watkins, club player Scott Page and former player Jack Dugan also are owners of Lucy’s, which once was known more as haven to bikers.

Rugby is definitely the focal point these days. Trophies and plaques and jerseys abound. It is aesthetically athletic.

Of course, even the toughest of waterfront saloons is not nearly as rough as the sport of rugby.

Chipman stood on the sideline after a recent round of Monday matches with blood running from a cut on his knee, another on his elbow and a bag of ice pressed against his right eye. However, no amount of pressure was going to keep his eye from turning as dark as a ripe plum.

“The elbow I caught tonight was a fluke,” laughed Chipman, 5-feet 4-inches. “If I’d been taller, it would have been a hit to the chest.”

It may have been a fluke, but Chipman had two court appearances the next day. Pete Deddeh could relate to Chipman’s dilemma.

Deddeh, another club player, is a deputy district attorney for San Diego County. He says he has shown up in court with stitches, black eyes and other assorted abrasions. On one occasion, after suffering a rugby injury, Deddeh had to miss a court appearance, forcing the judge to dismiss the jury until he could return a week later.

“Sometimes I have to explain to judges and juries in my closing statements that I didn’t get into a barroom brawl and that I got the injuries in a rugby match,” Deddeh said.

The players like to make clear that they do take the sport seriously.

The club, in fact, is most proud of its contribution to the U.S. national 15s and sevens teams. It has placed eight players, second only to the Old Blues of San Francisco, on the national 15s. Two of its current players--Brian Vizzard and Kevin Higgins--also play on the national squad.

Player-Coach Steve Gray is the national sevens coach also. He played on the national squad until last year when he turned to coaching. The one aspect of the sport Gray wants to keep is its amateur status.

“We play for fun,” said Gray. “The social aspect of the game is as important as the playing portion of it. If its professional, then you don’t get the sportsmanship and camaraderie.”

The club team is getting ready for a tour of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. Some of the players will be visiting old friends and there is little doubt all of the players will be making new ones.

“It’s a subculture all its own,” Watkins said. “A rugby guy can go anywhere in the world, look up the local rugby union and get a place to stay, some food or even a job. You’d do anything for people.”

What are friends--and opponents--for.