Rugger

In the first period, Harvard went into a huddle and was called to attention by W. J. Leather, vice-captain and 200-lb. forward of the Cambridge fifteen. Huddles are not allowed in rugby. Aside from this foolish faux pas, the Harvard rugby team in New York last week gave a much better account of itself than Cambridge would have been likely to do at U. S. football. When the first 40-min period ended, the score was only 26-to-10 for Cambridge.

In the second half, after a five-minute rest, Nazro of Harvard scored a try and Meiklejohn converted. A penalty kick by Meiklejohn after a Cambridge forward pass cut the Cambridge lead down to eight points. What followed were three Cambridge tries in quick succession, one of them on a brilliant play which neatly illustrated one of rugby's advantages over football. R. C. S. Dick, Cambridge centre three-quarter, running for the Harvard goal, saw two tacklers coming headon. He kicked the ball in the air, ran between the tacklers, caught the ball as it came down ten yards from the goal line, scored an easy try. Dismayed, Harvard scored no more before the game was over, 41-to 18, for Cambridge.

Last week's was by no means the first intercollegiate rugby revived in the U. S. Since 1930 Yale, Princeton and Harvard have formed teams and played against each other. On the Pacific Coast, Stanford and University of California played rugby instead of American football until 1914. Last year they revived the game as a spring supplement to football. Nor was it the first international rugby in the U. S. Last summer, the Cambridge Vandals, a club team, visited the U. S. for matches at Chicago and New York. Percy M. Heywood, the Vandals' captain, agreed to try to persuade Cambridge authorities to permit the Cambridge Varsity to visit the U. S. The Sportsmanship Brotherhood was happy to sponsor the tour. Editor Arthur S. Draper of the Literary Digest, with whom rugby is a private obsession, started a campaign for funds. Cambridge authorities agreed to send the Varsity, put up $3,500. Marshall Field, vice president of the Sportsmanship Brotherhood, is likely to be the angel for $2,500 more.

When the Cambridge rugby squad--19 men and manager--arrived in the U. S. last week, sportswriters were startled to find its members accompanied by no coach and smoking pipes. They had brought four rugby balls; just before they started, someone had learned that there was only one new ball in New York. Before the first game--played in New York on N. Y. U.'s Ohio Field, one of the few in the East big enough for rugby--the Cambridge squad visited a night club, attended a Sportsmanship Brotherhood dinner to which President Roosevelt wired: "Wish all assembled a most enjoyable evening." Cambridge's schedule in the U. S. calls for three more games, against Princeton. Yale, and a selected All-East team which will include players from the French Rugby Club and the New York Rugby Club.

A crowd of 4,500 saw the first game played on a muddy field which soon made the white shorts and light-blue-&-white Cambridge jerseys almost indistinguishable from Harvard's red shorts and jerseys. Cambridge stars included Leather, whose father was a British International (equivalent to U. S. All-America) in 1907 ; K. C. Fyfe, a good dropkicker, who played wing three-quarter against Oxford last year and the year before, won his Blue and International in his freshman year at Caius College; J. E. Bowcott, 145-Ib. scrum-half, smallest man on the team, whose spectacular lateral passing led to three Cambridge tries; Cliff Jones, a spry little 154-lb. Welsh freshman of Clare College, already considered one of the best stand-off halves in England. He recovered from a tonsillectomy just before the first game, almost scored a try in the first period, then fractured his ankle badly and was whisked to a hospital, leaving Cambridge to play through the rest of the game with a side of 14.

If rugby ever again becomes popular in the U. S., football crowds should approve some of its conventions. In rugby there are no time-outs (except for serious injuries), substitutions, blocking or forward passing. Lateral passes are the heart of the game. To aid the man with the ball, his teammates, instead of providing interference, keep away from their opponents so as to be ready to receive a pass when the man. with the ball is about to be tackled (see cut). Tackling around the neck is permitted in rugby. The game has the technique of football, the pattern of hockey. Cambridge players last week learned one trick from Harvard: the spiral pass, for more distance and accuracy on a line-out after touch.

U. S. onlookers would soon learn the meanings of such simple terms as were last week used by an announcer. Rugby glossary:

Scrum end--lineup for the start or resumption of play. The ball--pigskin covered but blunter than an American football--is thrown between two packs of forwards who bend over with locked arms, butting against each other and trying to kick the ball out to their backs. Scrum follows a knock-on (forward fumble while running). After a ball goes into touch end (out-of-bounds) it is lined-out (thrown in among two lines of forwards). A player catching a kick can signal for the equivalent of a fair catch by digging his heel in the turf and crying "Mark!"

Four points in rugby are scored by a dropped goal (drop kick on the run); three for a try (successful effort to carry the ball across the goal line; or a penalty kick; two for a goal-after-try (place kick after a try).

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