2006 Rugby Season Kicks Off with a Bang

The 2006 fall Mid Atlantic Rugby Union (MARFU) season has kicked off on the East Coast in the United States, and it looks to be an action packed fall. The fall began this past weekend in Dewey Beach Delaware with the hosting of the Annual Atlantic Cup Tournament.

The Atlantic Cup is typical of most American rugby tournaments, showcasing teams from around the region. The teams are broken up in four divisions. Premier, Men’s Open, Old Boys, and Women’s Open. These four divisions allow for ruggers with a variety of talent, experience and skill to come out and enjoy a weekend of well played rugby.

The Men’s Open divisions saw a wide variety of talent come together as Div II, Div I, and colligate squads came together to compete for bragging rights. From the looks of things there is a lot of potential ahead for American Rugby. The colligate sides played well against the older and more experienced men’s teams. Salisbury state was able show a respectable showing on the weekend, and prove why they are one of the dominate college teams in the Mid-Atlantic. In the end, it was Pittsburgh who walked away with the Open Division title.

In the Women’s Divisions Fredrick Women’s Club showed their experience and took advantage of several of younger college, and two depleted women’s teams. In route to a championship.

In typical Old Boys fashion the Maryland Renegades took the title home. However, anytime there is an Old Boys gathering that means there is plenty of booze, lots of heckling and very little rugby. The most important part is that a good time was had by all.

The event that people came out to see were the teams competing in the Premier Division. Media men’s Club, Maryland Exiles, Baltimore-Chesapeake, Northern Virginia Men’s (NOVA), and Washington Rugby Football Club (WRFC) made a compilation of Division I and Super League Clubs. Each team brought out their best sides to take part in this season opening tournament, and they were looking to get their seasons off to a good start.

Each team played three games on Saturday in a round robin style. The temps were hot, climbing into the 90’s by midday. The cool breeze from the beaches could barely be felt under the scoring sun. As the dust settled at the end of the first day, two teams were left with perfect records, WRFC and the Maryland Exiles. Both would square off on Sunday for the Atlantic Cup Championship.

Both teams play in the Div 1 MARFU schedule in the fall, and are located about 20 minutes away from each other, so needles to say they had met before. These are two teams with plenty of history. They had swapped players in the past, and held bitter battles on the pitch before WRFC moved into the Super League fulltime. They also have a long history on the 7’s pitch as both have represented the MARFU in the National tournament in the last two years.

As the game started, the Exiles jumped out early using quick moves in the backline, showing their continuity as a 7’s squad to put up 2 early tries and jump out to a 12-0 lead. Washington was able to cut that to 12-7 just before the half. Entering the second half Washington knew their back was against the wall. They needed to pull out all the stops by playing hardnosed rugby. A few adjustments in the forwards, and WRFC were quickly on the attack again. Using their size to dominate the smaller Exiles in scrums and rucks, WRFC was able to get the ball to their skill players. Soon the tied began to turn and WRFC rattled of 3 unanswered tries making the score 28-12 and giving WRFC the victory.

For WRFC this was a monumental tournament run. Going 4-0 to start a season against some of the top competition on the East Coast is never easy. Doing it with a team that is rebuilding and with a new coach is even more difficult.

Congratulations to all that participated in the 2006 Atlantic Cup. It was a great time for all who came out. Tournaments of this nature prove that Rugby is alive and well in the United States and with continued exposure and well run events like the Atlantic Cup American Rugby will continue to grow and see even more prosperity.