New Zealand calls rugby’s globe-trotting golden oldies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2018 (3105 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rugby is about as close to unstructured play as a sport can get.

It looks like an 80-minute fumble and chase. No one seems to know what they’re doing and everyone’s running after the ball at once. The referee is no more than a sprig of parsley on the main course, for decoration only.

Just don’t tell that to the Winnipeg Wasps Rugby Club unless you want a melon-shaped rugby ball wedged somewhere inappropriate on your person.

The Wasps will continue a loud and proud tradition this month when they travel to Christchurch, New Zealand, to participate in the 2018 Golden Oldies World Rugby Festival. It’s the 13th international tournament for the Wasps.

“To the uneducated, yes, it seems like massive confusion and chaos out there, but its highly organized when you see a pile of players converge on a ball,” said Marc Pellerin, one of the Wasp alumni heading to New Zealand.

The Wasps, formed in 1965, began their overseas adventures with a trip to Hawaii in 1975. Since then, they have travelled to such places as Scotland, England, Wales, Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. In 2015, they competed in Ireland.

How do they fare? Canada is not known as a rugby powerhouse, but organizers try to match like-skilled teams against each other, and the Wasps usually are competitive.

If not, the old rugby adage kicks in. “It’s the old story, if you can’t win the game, make sure you win the party after,” Pellerin, 54, said. “And if you win the game, you try to win the party and get the doubleheader.”

‘A lot of kids gravitate towards it precisely because they haven’t found a home in any other sport’– Winnipeg Wasp Marc Pellerin

One gets the impression the players are going mainly for a good time. “At our age? We’ve got no choice,” said Wasp teammate Sid Roberts, who grew up in New Zealand.

“Rugby is to New Zealand what hockey is to Canada,” he said.

The 23 on the trip range in age from 40 to 73, with seven over 60 and closer to 70. The older players get to wear red or gold shorts indicating whether they can be hit or not, and they are limited mostly to subbing for brief periods. Scores aren’t kept for fear the players’ competitive juices might start to boil.

Rugby started by the very act that happens on every schoolyard at some time during a recess soccer game. Some wiseacre will pick up the soccer ball and run around with it while others try to catch him. That happened in the 1830s with revolutionary results. A game developed and spread throughout the United Kingdom in the 1850s and 1860s, and around the world after that.

In fact, the Winnipeg Football Club (official name of the Blue Bombers) originally was a rugby club. Putting rugby side by side with North American football today is like standing an ape next to a human to study evolution.

Rugby enjoyed a revival in the 1960s an ’70s in Winnipeg, in part, because some teachers were looking for a sport to get involved in. That brought rugby into athletic programs at a number of Winnipeg schools including St. Paul’s, Vincent Massey, Kelvin, Fort Richmond, St. John’s, Sturgeon Heights and Sisler.

“A lot of kids gravitate towards it precisely because they haven’t found a home in any other sport,” Pellerin said.

That was his case. “I never played organized football, and hockey season was over, and I didn’t like soccer, and here was this oddball rugby sport that has a little bit of machismo attached to it and a reputation for great comradeship.”

It has potential to spread the way soccer has because everyone can play and there’s no expensive equipment to buy, said Wasps alumnus Lloyd Dawes. In fact, there’s no padding whatsoever. As soon as you put on pads for any sport, rugby players contend, you turn a contact sport into a collision sport and make it more dangerous.

The name Wasps, by the way, shouldn’t be confused with WASPs, the acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Otherwise, Dawes wouldn’t be going to Christchurch because he is neither white nor Anglo Saxon. Dawes, 64, the father of former NHLer Nigel Dawes, is originally from Jamaica. His family first moved to England, and then to Canada when he was 14.

As for rugby’s reputation for ruggedness and manliness, well, women like it, too. The Canadian women’s national team consistently ranks among the top four teams in the world. A women’s team was practising on the field over from the Wasps at the Axworthy Health & RecPlex on Saturday night.

The Christchurch Golden Oldies event also includes other sports such as cricket, golf, lawn bowling, field hockey and netball (a version of basketball), but rugby has by far the most uptake.

“The camaraderie in rugby is an amazing thing,” said Wasp alumnus Garry Nicholson, 69. “The game lends itself to that. It’s a physical game and that physicality draws people together.”

So, it isn’t all just partying at these international events? Yes, but you have to earn it, Nicholson said.

“You have to justify it. You just don’t get that handed to you.”

The Golden Oldies event runs from Apr. 22 to 29, but the Wasps will get in a warm-up game on Apr. 21.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca