By Francis Ambrogio
A few months ago, I saw that Greenwich High School Rugby would be celebrating its 40th anniversary this coming weekend. Alas, I am stationed over in Germany and was not able to make the trip, but I thought I might write a few words on the occasion.
I was introduced to rugby in the spring of 2008, when I was a young freshman – and showing up for the team was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Over the next few years, I was fortunate enough to learn the game, participate, and serve as a team captain in one of the United States’ best youth programs, and more importantly, to play with a magnificent group of guys and train under some terrific coaches.
The first coach I had in the program, John Porter of Cos Cob, used to tell us that “rugby is a passport.” And it really is – it’s a global sport, but even with its size and reach, it is the only major team sport in the world whose beating heart is found in schoolboy teams and amateur clubs. In fact, rugby’s governing body refused to allow professional play until the 1990s, over a century after its foundation!
For all the glamor, investment, and intensity of the global game, the soul of rugby lives in its gentlemanly culture (which may seem surprising given the furious action on the pitch) and its deep sense of camaraderie and brotherhood, things which apply before, during, and after every match and exist at every level of the sport. It’s exciting, social, and welcoming – there’s a spot for every type of athlete, whether their athleticism echoes more the rhinoceros, the giraffe, or the gazelle – a fifteen-man rugby side needs and has a place for all. And it’s fundamentally a game and a sport in the truest sense – you train hard, you play with passion, you play fairly and follow the laws (no “rules” in rugby, just laws), you don’t argue with the referee, and when it’s all over, you shake hands and break bread with the other side.
My career in the US Army has taken me all over the world, and Coach Porter’s statement about rugby being a passport has proven more than accurate. When I served in Korea, some friends and I met a pair of rugby teams at a post-match drinkup by the beach in the port city of Busan. Next thing we knew, we were fully-fledged members of the Ulsan Goblins Rugby Football Club, played in a tournament a few weeks later, and were given the locations of English-speaking pubs in Seoul that would air international rugby matches.
Here in Germany, where I coach and train US, NATO, and partner forces, the first unit I worked with was from the French Army. France is a rugby superpower, and our common love of the game served as an immediate icebreaker. After the two-week exercise ended, the French threw a cookout in the basecamp, during which they projected the France versus Namibia match on an outdoor wall – the Rugby World Cup was ongoing back in France, and no training deployment was going to stop these Frenchmen from watching the game.
I posted a video of the event on my Instagram story, and upon seeing it, another GHS Rugby old boy (technical term for a former player), Alasdair Kerr – from Old Greenwich and a Scotsman’s Scot – saw it and reached out. What he saw in the video was a rugby match on a projector, a cookout with perhaps a little bit of beer, lots of people wearing dark blue shirts, and a man playing bagpipes. He assumed I was with the Scottish fans at the World Cup over in France. I informed him that I was, in fact, over in Germany on an army post with the blue-clad soldiers of the French Republic, and that this particular regiment traced its lineage to the “Wild Geese” – exiled Irishmen who served for centuries in the French Army – thus, the bagpipes.
Despite the initial confusion, Alasdair told me he could get me tickets to come join him and his family in Nice the following weekend to watch Scotland play against Tonga, and then in Lille the week after that to see Scotland versus Romania. The condition: I had to become a Scotland fan, even if Ireland or Italy were playing. Of course, I accepted, and I’ve belted out “Flower of Scotland” before every Scotland match since then (may my ancestors forgive me!).
Closer to home, however, is the club I found in my own city of Regensburg here in Bavaria. I had played on and off since my first year at West Point, but the Regensburg Rugby Club is the first team I’ve truly been part of in much too long – and there’s nothing like it in the world. Training twice a week, a match every two weeks or so, drinks and meals with other teams, absolutely absurd traditions, rambunctious bus rides back from away games with lots of (usually very bad) singing, a pub that is our spot with a publican who tolerates us, and most importantly, a group of the greatest of friends imaginable – these things are irreplaceable. They’re more than worth every ounce of sweat and blood and every bruise, scrape, bleed, black eye, and broken bone.
When I told Coach Porter that I’d found a proper club again, it all came together when he sent me a package labelled “something I think you’ll like” from where he now lives in Britain. Inside was an old freshman “C Side” jersey from Greenwich High, with its bold red and white stripes – coincidentally, the same colors as our club wears here in Regensburg… and somehow it still fits!
If you are free this Saturday, or any other day the boys have a match, go check out some rugby. It truly is the world’s greatest sport, not just for the athleticism or the intensity or the global reach of the game, but for the basic friendship, brotherhood, and gentlemanliness it is built on.
Happy 40th to Greenwich High School Rugby – and here’s to many more.
