Remember America’s ‘tavern league’ era, when ill-resourced, player-coached teams contested lightly organized leagues while celebrating the cultish, borderline behavior of 20- and 30-year-olds?
These days, most do not. The game is predominated by students, most of whom weren’t born at the time of its heyday in the 1980s and early 1990s. So what do we really know of the stereotype?
Jay Atkinson’s
- Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man: Guts, Glory, and Blood in the World’s Greatest Game
, a well-crafted autobiography of a senior-grade player in Florida, Boston, and elsewhere, is a poignant, representative snapshot of the men who identified with rugby beyond all else.
- Rugby-Playing Man’s
dust jacket sensationalizes its contents, but the narrative is more nuanced. As the author begins, ‘There are the things we do for love, and the things we do for rugby, which are pretty much the same, at least in my case’.
To be sure, there are any number debauched adventures, some of which could still transpire today. It is one thing to revisit tales among teammates, however, and another to bring them to life – without pandering – for a new audience. This is a primary achievement of Atkinson’s effort.
Still more interesting are recollections of how Atkinson found his home at hooker, a controversial state championship match, or a tour of Wales. Anyone who played in the era will relate. Though the book is consciously neither historical or sociological, later generations and outsiders will glimpse the game as commonly experienced.
Disgust with the tavern-league era – homespun administrators as much as outre players – is one explanation for American rugby’s latter-day obsession with professionalizing. The union’s present constitution seals the board off from the grassroots: only well-heeled capitalists need apply. Most have no affinity for American rugby culture, always a weakness for any government.
Atkinson’s
- Rugby-Playing Man
surpasses its author’s narrative, portraying the good and bad of a bygone time. America’s modern era, which has fallen short of its self-declared goals, will do well to find an equally skillful telling.
See also http://www.gainline.us/gainline/2015/02/on-the-tavern-league-era.html