AUBURN – What do George W. Bush, Andy MacIsaac and Chad Baril have in common?
All are members of a rather exclusive fraternity of American rugby players. President Bush played rugby at Yale. MacIsaac, a 45-year-old retired Army staff sergeant, spent nearly 12 years playing the game while stationed in Europe. And Baril, a 26-year-old newlywed as of this weekend, learned to love the game at Plymouth State College after quitting football.
The President may be too busy playing political football to join in, but MacIsaac and Baril and about a dozen other locals aren’t ready to give up getting into a scrum and tossing the leather oval around.
The rugby diehards have been gathering behind Auburn Middle School twice a week for the last six weeks. They’re still a man short to have the required 15 players on the field, or pitch, and challenge another local club, but word of the team has been spreading and interest growing around the Twin Cities.
“Right now, it’s pretty much word of mouth and the occasional flyer,” Baril said.
The group is looking to grow to at least 22-25 members and start their own club, tentatively dubbing itself the Androscoggin Rugby Club.
There are only a handful of rugby clubs in the state, most notably the Portland Rugby Football Club, which has been around for more than a quarter of a century. Outside of a club team for Bates students, Baril and MacIsaac don’t know of any recent attempts to form one in the Twin Cities.
They realize it may be a bit of an uphill battle now because of the stereotypes surrounding rugby.
“Folks just have this idea that it’s these guys out there just beating the crap out of each other, and it’s actually very organized and there is a very strict set of rules,” said MacIsaac, who played for a German team while stationed in Germany, then joined a British team when he was transferred to Belgium. “Yeah, you’re going to get bumps and bruises. You’re going to get scrapes. It’s rough, but it’s not really violent or brutal. I think American football is a more violent sport because of all of the impact of the collisions.”
Most people’s exposure to rugby has been limited to college club teams, and thus many think of it as a rowdy sport played by men who like to have rowdy parties afterwards, MacIsaac said. But the local clubbers want to make their rugby a family activity. Along those lines, they’d eventually like to start a women’s club and hold clinics for kids.
“We’ll have our fun, but we want to bring the families and the community into it, too,” Baril said. “We want to do community service and things like that. We want to make it a good club for the community as well.”
MacIsaac said European rugby centers around the social as much as the competitive. Wives and girlfriends were heavily involved in the clubs he played for, and the clubs held many non-playing activities to strengthen the bond between teammates.
“What I really missed about rugby is the social life,” said MacIsaac, a Maryland native now living in Lewiston. “There’s a lot of social stuff that goes on in rugby.”
“In Belgium, it was almost like the rugby was secondary,” he added. “It was really about the social thing first and you played rugby to be involved with the social side. I hope to do the same sort of thing here. We want non-playing club members, too.”
First things first, though. The club is looking for more players, some sponsorships and a permanent home, preferably with lights, to get things going on the field. Anyone interested in participating can call MacIsaac (576-7903) or Baril (754-0555).
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