Give it a try

Claire Preville, 30, of Bloomfield, began playing the sport at her boyfriend's behest when she was a sophomore at Ohio University.

She recently was one of almost 30 members of the Pittsburgh Rugby Club practicing near Martin Luther King Elementary School on the North Side, a partial tear of her right medial collateral ligament during a 2004 match a distant memory.

About 100 members make up the Pittsburgh Rugby Club, including the women's team, the Pittsburgh Angels. The club, which plays matches at Boyce Park in Plum, was founded in 1964 and is one of only five non-university rugby clubs in the region, along with the Pittsburgh Harlequins in Indiana Township, South Pittsburgh Hooligans in South Park, Highlander Rugby Club in Polish Hill and the Greensburg Rugby Football Club in Westmoreland County.

"Your backline can be surgical residents and FBI agents," said Tom McClain, 48, of Mt. Lebanon, a Downtown lawyer and occasional Pittsburgh Rugby Club player. "Rugby is a ruffians' game played by gentlemen."

Doctors and professors, roofers and bartenders, lawyers and landscapers all play rugby. All are willing to scrum in the mud for a chance at a try, rugby's equivalent of a touchdown.

"My dad played minor league hockey, and he thinks I'm nuts," said Preville, a purchasing buyer for Management Science Associates in West Deer.

Rugby, a precursor to football, owns a rugged reputation, but it is not limited to menacing men or wild women.

The Harlequins, for example, conduct fundraisers -- raising tens of thousands of dollars each year -- to operate co-ed youth leagues for at-risk children ages 8 to 14 in 25 neighborhoods across Western Pennsylvania.

About 300 children participate in the two-hand touch program, which began 10 years ago, said Sean Madden, president of the Harlequins' nonprofit association that runs the league.

The Harlequins also organize high school programs at Woodland Hills and Fox Chapel, as well as a combined team for Sto-Rox and Canevin high schools, Madden said.

"The biggest obstacle is not interfering with the god football in Western Pennsylvania," said Madden, chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at California University of Pennsylvania.

The Harlequins have about 300 alumni across the country, including members who came from France, Kenya and Tonga in the South Pacific, said Paul McGregor, the club's president.

McGregor, 35, began playing rugby as a child growing up in Glasgow, Scotland, and didn't hesitate to find a team when he moved to Pittsburgh in 1997.

"A new person in town as a rugby player, you instantly have 25 or 30 brothers," he said. "That's the same anywhere in the world."

As is the case with McGregor, rugby has been a way of life for Des O'Connor.

An Ireland native, O'Connor began playing when he was 8 and continued through college. After graduating, he moved to the United States and played in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh.

Now 41, and his playing days all but finished -- "These things start to hurt too much," he said -- O'Connor serves as secretary of the Pittsburgh Rugby Club and president of the Allegheny Rugby Union, which includes clubs from such places as Rochester, N.Y., and Morgantown, W.Va.

"It's a tough sport, along the lines of hockey and lacrosse, but it's not as brutal as people think," he said. "It's not like it's a major issue. People see there are players out there without pads or helmets. They liken the game to football. People wouldn't play it if it was that dangerous."

Dan Talbert, 36, of Point Breeze, had never seen rugby until he attended Pitt in the late 1980s. Students started a club team in 1990, and a friend of Talbert's suggested he play. Talbert, who swam as a child, tried it and has played ever since, even serving as Pitt's coach today.

"My mom came to one game. She'll never come again," Talbert said as he stretched before practice two weeks ago. "It looks like organized kill-the-man-with-the-ball, but it's not.

"If you're an athlete, especially in Western Pennsylvania, this sport is for you."

Rugby in a nutshell

The history

The long-accepted, but probably untrue version of the beginnings of rugby starts with William Webb Ellis. While playing soccer at Rugby School of England in 1823, he was said to have picked up the ball in his hands and ran with it, leading to the birth of the game of rugby. Playing football has a long tradition in England and football had probably been played at Rugby School for two hundred years before three boys published the first set of written rules in 1845.

How to play

The basic game involves 15 players though seven-a-side tournaments are also popular.

The object of the game is to score as many points as possible by carrying, passing, kicking and grounding an oval ball in the scoring zone at the far end of the field -- called the in-goal area. Grounding the ball, which must be done with downward pressure, results in a try (worth 5 points). After a try a conversion may be attempted by place kick or drop kick. If the ball passes over the bar and between the goal posts the conversion is successful and results in a further 2 points. Points may also be scored from a drop kick in general play (worth 3 points) and a penalty kick (worth 3 points).

The ball may not be passed forward (though it may be kicked forward) and players may not receive the ball in an offside position, nor may they wait in such a position. Players may not be tackled without the ball. Play only stops when a try is scored, or the ball goes out of play, or an infringement occurs. When the ball goes out it is thrown back in at a line-out where the opposing "forwards" line up and jump for the ball. Infringements result in a penalty, or free kick, or scrum. In a scrum the opposing forwards bind together in a unit and push against the other forwards, trying to win the ball with their feet. Substitutions are only allowed in case of injury and there is no separate offensive and defensive unit.

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