Rugby is not for everybody, but almost every body is good for rugby, according to Kirk Neubauer, the player-coach of Chattanooga's 34-year-old club for the rough-and-tumble sport.
"What I always tell people is that unlike other sports, rugby has a position for everybody and every body type," Neubauer said recently. "You can be 6-5 or 5-10 and 250 pounds or 5-2 and 100 pounds. There are 15 positions, and almost every one is for a different body type, and there's a spot whether you're fast or slow."
The Chattanooga Rugby Football Club, nicknamed "Nooga Rugby," went undefeated in the MidSouth league regular season last year for the first time but lost in the first round of the playoffs. The team had a fall match at Huntsville and won 49-15 but now is starting to prepare for the spring season and is making a push for new blood.
While practices normally are held on the East Ridge High School practice field, the tryouts this week will run from 8 to 10 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday at the D1 Sports indoor complex near Hamilton Place. Candidates are asked to arrive by 7:45, and Neubauer emphasizes that rugby experience is not necessary.
"We're looking at men in the 18-to-35 years range," he said, "maybe guys who played sports in the past and are still looking for something competitive. It helps if they have a contact-sports background, but that's not necessary.
"In my 15 years in the sport, I've never seen a guy get to his first game and say, 'I don't like this.' We'll see people go through a week or two of practice and then give it up, but if you actually play in a game, you're hooked."
Chattanooga Rugby has had high school and women's teams in the past and hopes soon to branch out beyond its men's team again. There is excitement with the city having committed to working with the club to build rugby fields at Montague Park and start growing the sport locally.
This year's home games, all on Saturday afternoons, will be at Hutcheson Memorial Field in Rossville.
Neubauer, 32, played football and baseball and wrestled growing up, but he wasn't "big enough" or "good enough" to excel in those. He began playing rugby in high school and did well at Penn State before getting his engineering degree and moving to Chattanooga in 2002 to work for Worley Parsons Group.
"I guess I was in town roughly two or three weeks before I started playing with Chattanooga," Neubauer said. "I joined the team to make friends, but in less than two months I was the coach."
Another former college player (Massachusetts-Lowell) who came to the area as an engineer is Clayton Parr, the team's 31-year-old captain.
"I love the camaraderie, the brotherhood of the sport," Parr said. "We do a lot of things away from the game, and it's great to see guys come together doing something not many other people do. Plus it's a fast-paced contact sport -- 80 minutes of nonstop running and tackling, up and down, everything. And anybody can play it. People think it's just for strong, burly types, but it's also for the fast and agile."
The positions have names such as "fly half" and "scrum half," " hooker" and "inside centre," "second row" and "tight-head prop" and "loose-head prop." There are "openside" as well as "blindside" flankers to go with wings and full backs.
Anyone interested in more information can email Neubauer at kxn135@hotmail.com or Parr at clayton_parr@yahoo.com.