Engine room! Rugby is rugged, rough and colorful
Engine room! Engine room! When a rugby team from Wilkes-Barre Scranton screams terms evoking images of cast-iron boilers and destroyers before the ball is rolled into the scrum, you just know some big old barrel-chested, bearded bald guy is coming outta there with the intent to deliver mayhem to the defense. The Delmarva Rugby Club, mixed young guys with little experience, went skull to skull with the undefeated Breakers of Wilkes-Barre Oct. 24 in Millsboro, but playing defense for two 40-minute halves just wore them down and beat them down for a 34-0 loss. “They soft, man," Eddie Boyer told his teammates after the game. Ballistic Boyer was physical throughout the game and so were Keith Jones, Dean Jullian and Darrin Beckett, but the overall greater mass and experience of the Breakers was just too much to overcome. Delmarva plays in Level 4 Division of the Eastern Pennsylvania Rugby Union. The games are played in front of the American Legion on Route 24 in Millsboro. Bring your spouse and your own matching lawn chairs. Say hello to team mascot Biscuit, the Yorkie with a bad attitude. Next game is Saturday in Millsboro versus North Penn. If you’re offended by a strafing of f-bombs dropped on your head, if you like color with the sound turned down, there’s a Saturday arts and crafts sidewalk sale somewhere with a ceramic Yorkie for the knick-knack shelf of your corner curio cabinet. Delmarva will be starting a U19 team in the spring.
Fire the coach! Malcolm “Doc” Judkins has a PhD in chemistry from Berkeley University in California. He taught chemistry at Cape for years. Doc seemed to be a quiet expert on almost every subject. Ask Doc a question and he’d say, “Well, it could be one of two things, and one of those is bad.” Doc loved hearing coaches in the faculty room banter back and forth after good games and bad games. Doc’s favorite line was “Fire the coach,” and then he'd laugh, knowing to blame an entire system of moving parts played by multiple people could not be blamed on one person. Therefore, “Fire the coach!” Doc found to be illogically hilarious. But that’s what is going on in football right now: Coaches being fired in midstream like Al Golden at Miami and Randy Edsall at Maryland, like the entire system isn’t messed up anyway. Warren Sapp weighed in (you feel me) on the Golden firing, which is just so precious. The flip side continues to be “Blame that loss” on me uttered by the coach, which is starting to get really annoying. I’d like to blame it on the people who miss blocks and tackles and couldn’t catch a cold in the Klondike.
Don’t speak of streaks - Cape hockey players and girls who play lacrosse are part of an incredible winning tradition, and there are streaks and fascinating factoids from the last seven years, but no player wants to hear about it during the season. Do you question a pitcher in the seventh inning of a no-hitter or ask a quarterback, “Dude, how many passes in a row have you completed?” Each game starts and ends in its own universe. Sixty minutes of opportunities to win exist for all players. I don’t use the term losers because to play hard and not win doesn’t make an athlete a loser, they were just on the team that didn’t win this time, but there’s always next time.
Snippets - My sports world Wednesday through Sunday was cross country, field hockey, football, rugby and college women’s lacrosse. All those sports have officials without whom fans would have no place to displace their life’s frustration. You don’t yell at finish line cross country clockers and choosers. A field hockey berating of an official stops the game and gets you tossed from the stadium. Football fans yell from the 18th row behind the band. And rugby you just don’t, it’s totally uncool. Last Sunday at the Philly 5 women’s lax tournament at Temple, the Drexel Dragon Daddy Quartet stood together and complained and tossed barbs at the officials. That was uncharacteristic of what I usually see, and I’m sure their student/athlete Division I-playing daughters have a word for it, “Embarrassing!”
You can’t stop believing if you never started, but, honestly, I have always believed that this Cape soccer team has a shot in the state tournament. I want to witness a team win a state championship in a sport that has never done it before. We got close last spring in baseball and hopefully they will be back again. Go on now, git!
