As football players hand in their cleats and hockey players draw on their skates, Harvard's rugger players are taking a short rest between seasons. The popularity at football's ancestor is on the rise again as the Harvard Rugby Club prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary this spring. The only squad at Harvard with freshmen, upperclassmen, and graduate students combined on one team, the rugby men will resume practice in February at Briggs Cage, in preparation for a ten game spring schedule.

Started in 1931 by a small group of British graduate students, the game quickly caught on here, and its growth was accelerated by a trip made by Cambridge University the following year. Playing the first game of their tour in the Stadium, the Light Blues whipped the Crimson by a score of 42-0, the equivalent of nine touchdowns, and showed the University the possibilities that lay in rugby.

The first game scheduled this season is a home match, March 20, against the New York Rugby Club, an excellent team, which should do a lot to help prepare the Crimson for its spring vacation trip to co-ed infested Bermuda. The purpose of this visit, entirely paid for by the team members, is to participate is the intercollegiate Cup matches.

Last year Princeton and Dartmouth played a hard-fought 3-3 tie in the cup final: the Tigers also won last year's Eastern Rugby League title, edging the Crimson, with a 7-3 record, into second place.

On their return to Cambridge, the Crimson will play its annual game with Yale at Vassar. By the end of last year's match Yale's 15 man team had been reduced to 11 and Harvard's to ten by injuries, since in rugby no substitutions are allowed.

While spring is the main season for rugby, last autumn's team had a floating membership of about 40 players, of which only five were freshmen chasing after the ever-elusive P. T. credit. Besides Captain Rob Albert, Terry Turner, al Ellis, Jorg Hardoy, and Martin Lindsay, all players with experience ranging up to Harrods's 13 years of play in Argentina assisted with the coaching.

One of the team's major problems, besides the inexperience of most players, was a lack of weight. Size, although not as important as in football, is a considerable asset in rigger, and strength in this department should be greatly increased in the spring.

"I think there is an excellent chance of our being able to field two fairly strong sides for the spring season." Albert said yesterday.

Varsity football captain-elect Bill Meigs heads a list of varsity football players who expressed their hopes of turning out in February. John Nichols, Crimson captain in 1952, Jan Meyer, Ted Kennedy, Art Ticknor, and Woody Simpson, JV football coach, are returning veterans of last year's team, Ticknor and Simpson having played in the fall also.

Other football players coming out for the first time include Bob Wynne, John Maher, Joe Ross, Frank White, and Orville Tice.

Rugby holds a unique place among Harvard sports, owing to its non-existent training rules. Playing the game because they like it, the ruggers train hard at practice, smoke all they want, play a violent 70-minutea game, at the end of which they are in a state of near-unconsciousness, and then have a big party to recover for the next match.

Sometimes one member of the team arrives late for game, and when this happens, they are usually faced with the prospect of playing one man short. At Princeton last fall just such a prospect was looming on the horizon, with 14 men on the field at kick-off time. All was not lost, however, as the fifteenth man arrived and changed in midfield, protected by a huddle of his teammates.

Progressively loud cheers greeted the exit of each garment from the center of the group, and finally the Crimson had a full team after all.