MAMMA, DON'T LET YOUR BABIES grow up to be ruggers. Don't let 'em hurt folks and drive hard in loose rucks. Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.

This is what several decades of rugby will get you. Man boobs, receding hair, artificial knees, a stomach that needs to be sucked in, and sunglasses because you're blind and therefore qualified to be a rugby referee. I remember when each one of these guys was young -- including me. Never did we suspect that 30, 35 years later we'd still be dragging our sorry butts to some sad outpost of pain to spend a day of happy misery among boys too young to know the terrible truth. Rugby isn't just a youthful indiscretion. It's a lifetime indiscretion.

Travellin' with kit bags and old faded jerseys to pitches unheard of with directions unknown. And if you don't understand him and he don't quit young, he'll probably tell you he feels right at home.

The better part of two hundred young men, and formerly young men, gathered in Stone Harbor, N.J. today for the fourth annual Surfside Sevens rugby tournament sponsored by the Philadelphia-Whitemarsh Rugby Club. There's an old saying in rugby: Those who can, play. Those who can't, ref. Those who can't play or ref, write about it. I guess that last part would mean me. But I feel no embarrassment among this crew because these guys are old enough to remember my 15 minutes of magnificence as a rugby player.

OK, OK, itt took me almost 20 years to accumulate that total of 15 minutes, but hey, I earned them the old fashioned way. One injury at a time. Some of these guys might have been responsible for one or more of them since we played against each other more frequently than on the same side. That's Blackthorn-bred Joe Grohovsky on the left, and Harrisburg-escapee Michael Cook on the right, and the grin reaper next to me (I'm the one in red with the man boobs) is the guy I like to call "the snake from South Jersey" Pete Hesler. We go back a long ways. It's a rugby thing. The longer your around, you're glad to stand next to guys you once wanted to see flat on their backs.

Mamma, don't let your babies grow up to be ruggers. They'll never stay home and they're never alone alone, even with people they loathe.
Ruggers aren't easy to love and their harder to scold. You like them for something they do that is bold. You hate them for seeking it then asking to ice it and then pretending each bruise is real gold.