The team has also been attracting some attention from fans. Marett says about 200 people turned out to watch the team’s match against U-Mass last fall.

Marett also remembers staging an intra-club scrimmage which caught the attention of fans watching a nearby Harvard baseball game. When the baseball game ended, the fans drifted to the next field to watch the rugby team play.

Rough and Ready

The ranks of the men’s rugby team, which director of club sports John Wentzell recently called “the crown jewel” of the club sports program at Harvard, have filled gradually over the year with ex-varsity athletes, mainly from the football, track and crew teams.

In addition to the high level of skill—Kersey estimates that one-third of the team’s starters are former varsity athletes—the team plays with an intensity that surpasses many varsity sports.

“One ex-football player said rugby practice is the hardest he’s worked since high school,” Marett says.

The rugby team has also gained a reputation for playing through pain. Sayle scored the winning try against Yale last year with a broken collarbone. Junior fullback Ryan Aylward played part of last season with a torn ACL.

“People play pretty hurt,” Atkinson says. “You just feel for the team.”

Since rugby is a club sport, the athletic department will not allow team members into the training room, a privilige only offered to varsity and junior varsity sports. Last year, senior outside center John Mazza sprained an ankle and could not be taken to the training room for intermediate care. He lay on the field for almost a half an hour waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

“Since you don’t get treated by the trainers, you learn fast to deal with your own problems,” Mazza says. “It’s not unusual that guys pop four or five Advil before games to numb themselves for a while. After that, we just basically play on adrenaline.”

But there is another side to the rugby team, which the co-captains are quick to emphasize lest potential recruits are scared away by the brutal nature of the sport.

Marett says the team welcomes anyone, and even has one player starting on the club’s second team who had never before played an organized sport.

“It’s automatically like a brotherhood the first time you come out,” Atkinson says.

The first thing that happens to new recruits when the enter the brotherhood” is receiving a new name.

Marett, a 220-pounder of Italian descent, is called “The Big Ragu” by his teammates. Kersey, known for his intense play on the field, has been nicknamed “Scrapper,” after a scene in Braveheart in which the character Edward the Longshanks proclaims “let the scrappers come to us.” The nicknames have become so embedded into the team, Marett says, that some people don’t know their teammates’ real names.