COLUMN: Rugby Sevens

The first bit of the 2024 Paris Olympics landed in my living room this past weekend.

I watched in stunned amazement as the sport known as Rugby Sevens, or to rugby fans, simply, “Sevens”. 

I have seen rugby before, but never played it mostly because of my fondness for a regular shaped nose. The same kind of thinking kept me out of the boxing ring where cauliflower ears come from. 

But as the match continued, in this case the gold medal game between host France and the island nation of Fiji, a rugby fan deep in my psyche emerged. 

It answered a question I have long pondered...where do NFL middle and outside linebackers go if American football no longer tickles their fancy? 

I’m pretty sure a good option would be rugby. 

For one thing, most of the players look like human-shaped muscles wearing cleats on their feet. They also wear uniforms but, and here is the fascinating part to me, they wear no pads. 

And yet they race up and down a large field trying to carry a ball over the goal line. I’m not sure exactly how the scoring works, but I think getting the ball over the goal line is worth six points. 

Then they drop kick the ball, often from weird angles, through what look like overgrown football goal posts, for what looks like an extra point you would see in a football game. 

Bottom line, this sport is not for the faint of heart. Large, muscular folks crashing into each other sans pads has got to be an orthopedic surgeon’s delight, not to mention a sales booster for Icy Hot pain cream. 

There is, I read, a form of “regular” rugby where 15 players on a “side” square off for two 40-minute halves. Sevens is played by seven players who knock heads, literally, for two seven-minutes halves with seven players on the turf for each team. 

The Sevens version of the sport, which was on the broadcast I watched, is what the French won, setting off a wild celebration among the hometown fans. 

The players on both teams hit hard, rolled around a lot, “hiked” the ball, and passed it to each other by hitting it with one hand while holding it in the other. 

It may be a sport for the unbalanced.  There was a story/rumor going around years ago that a University of Montana based rugby team, which featured several oversized players from Samoa, was so rowdy at a tournament in Canada that they were escorted to the US-Canada border crossing by the Mounties and told to never come back to Canada. 

I will watch this sport again and in a strange way wish I was 30 years old and not held together by wires, plates and screws. 

It is not a sport with complex rules and regulations such as Cricket.  I stopped by a park in the Seattle area once to watch a cricket match, and after two hours of a kind old gentleman patiently explaining the rules to me, I left completely confused. 

This sport is huge in places like Australia and New Zealand. 

It is somehow fitting that those two nations, with their awesomely bizarre collection of animals found nowhere else on the planet, would be a hit down under. 

Rugby, you have a new fan in Plains, Montana.