Seiji Wood
Sports Editor
RJ Palmer locks on to his opponent.
He’s coming right towards him. Palmer knows this is his chance.
Palmer isn’t the tallest in height but has a sturdy upper and lower body. Growing up playing football and experiencing the army reserve, he’s someone who can take a hard hit.
With only a few practices under his belt before his first game against Boise and being out of football for over a year, his tackling is rusty, which is a key element in the sport of rugby.
As Palmer gets closer, he lunges forward to make the tackle. The runner braces for impact and lowers his shoulder, cracking Palmer right in the nose and lodging it out of place.
Watery eyed and dazed, Palmer gets back up and continues the rest of the game with a broken nose.
“It hurt,” Palmer said. “I learned after that one. Get low.”
Rugby is a game broken down into two halves of 40 minutes each. The field is just barely bigger than a football field.
There are four ways to score in rugby: a try is worth five points, a conversion is awarded to the team after a try and can lead to two bonus points, a penalty kick can lead to three and a drop goal can also lead to three points.
Rugby can be played with either 15 players on each team or with seven. In the collegiate level, playing with 15 is the norm. In the collegiate style of rugby, one rule stays the same: whoever starts the game, ends the game. No substitutes. No rest. No exceptions.
“You basically have to die on the field to get a sub,” said Kelton Simons, captain of Idaho State’s rugby team, half-jokingly. “And even then, they’ll probably just leave you until the game is over.”
For Idaho State, that’s been a sad truth. In 2003, Michael Sims was a 21-year-old junior who passed away during a doubleheader game against Oregon. Late into the second game against Oregon, Sims did a routine defensive play called a “ruck,” in which the ball carrier is tackled and players on offense attempt to keep defenders from getting possession. Sims collapsed during the play and later died at a nearby hospital.
Ram Eddings is a USA rugby Hall of Famer and was ISU’s head coach back in 2003. He recently came out of retirement to return as head coach.
“We don’t what happened,” Eddings said. “It was how he got hit or something … it was a tough loss.”
Idaho State has had a rugby team since 1995. The team, throughout the years, has experienced its fair share of up and downs. Michael Sims’ death was the lowest of them all.
One year, ISU made it to the elite eight and finished as high as seventh in the nation.
Currently, the team has been improving since the transition between coaching staffs. The recognition of ISU rugby and rugby in Pocatello has flown under the radar in past years, but since 2012, which was the beginning of rugby for high schools around Pocatello, the rugby league has grown enough to have both men and women’s clubs at the collegiate and high school levels.
Despite the sheer physicality that rugby portrays, the sport is a lot more technical than you may think. Everyone does their best to play as safe as possible.
“It can be a very physical sport,” Eddings said. “We try to teach the players the right way to do things.”
Kelton Simons is a former ISU offensive lineman and returned to his passion of rugby after being introduced to it in 2012 during his senior year of high school. Simons has the stature of a grizzly bear, with hair like Rapunzel.
“You’re always playing,” Simons said. “Everybody plays defense, everybody plays offense. You run, tackle, kick and catch. It’s a lot more fun by being involved in every aspect of the game.”
Rugby is a sport that entails the strength of a football player with the stamina of a marathon runner. The demand required and recognition given in rugby is the biggest attraction to the sport.
You win as a team or lose as a team. Individual accolades and glory are frowned upon.
James Lewis began playing rugby in Peru, where he grew up, for the international under-18 team and has experienced the growth of rugby firsthand during the past four years he’s played at ISU.
“Rugby is an upcoming sport here,” Lewis said. “The camaraderie of rugby is just unlike any sport.”
Not only was Lewis referring to the teamwork in the sport, but also what’s known as the third half, which commences after the game where both teams, win or lose, go out to eat with one another. The third half is well-understood and -respected within rugby culture.
Rugby in Pocatello and ISU is bound to get bigger. Though rugby is only a club at the collegiate and high school level, there’s a possibility in the future that it grows into more than that.
The culture of the sport is unique, and the game has a lot to offer to all those who participate.
“Rugby is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen,” Simons said.
