GIVE ME TEN MEN. Who are stout-hearted men. And I'll give you some lyrics I don't understand. I've heard that song a thousand times but I never quite got the words. The first lines in the rousing chorus of that famous Nelson Eddy march go, "Give me some men who are stout hearted men. Who will fight for the right they adore." All these years and I never heard the key word, adore.

The song comes to mind because I was in the company of stout hearted men Saturday night during the Philadelphia-Whitemarsh Rugby Club hall of fame induction ceremonies. A man doesn't get into an amatuer athletic hall of fame without adoring the sport he played, and in the case of rugby football it is no coincidence that adore rhymes with endure.

Rugby has haunted my life like an exercise in bad judgement that I would keep making over and over again even in the face of maturity, responsibility and certain death. Every rugby player knows he's going to die one day. Could that be why we play? To cheat the reaper? What terror can death hold after you've voluntarily submitted yourself to the torments of Monday morning after a rugby match, week after week, year after year. The game is tough enough. But the physical hangover from all that pounding is nothing but inglorious suffering. And just when your body is getting over last week's injuries, you start all over again.

Every rugby player I know hurts. Not that he'd tell you. I mean anyone who has played rugby every weekend like a religion for at least 10 years of his life. A decade of rugby proves something to a man about himself. Not only can I hack it, I love it. Not only do I suffer, I enjoy it. Not only do I risk injury, I can almost guarantee one. And yet the rugby player, like the boxer who "carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down or cut him 'til he cried out," still remains.

Saturday night I was in rugby heaven, which is a place you go when all the people who lived through the same madness, bus trips and mud flats show up at the same time. Along with their sons and daughters. And the people who love them anyway. The inductees into the Philadelphia-Whitemarsh rugby club's hall of fame -- John Siano, Joe Dougherty and Keith McLean -- were to a man, men. They were poised, prepared, modest and funny. And they didn't know when to shut up. They were honored to be honored. And maybe just a little bit amazed. They stood among peers in a shared brotherhood of pain and they fought back tears, some more successfully than others.