By David Rusk

with thanks to Diego Bouche Ocampo, Gregory Rusk and, especially, Doug Barnes for thoughtful comments and editorial assistance

This is my third Letter from Buenos Aires, reflecting on my recent month-long visit (the 25th or 26th that I have made to Argentina’s capital city over 55 years of marriage to Delcia, a native porteña). The first article was subtitled "A Visit to El Nuevo Gasómetro," the stadium of San Lorenzo, my Argentine club, for a Copa Libertadores game. It focused on the game day experience.

The second letter, subtitled "Villa Miseria and Barra Brava" reviewed Argentina’s political and economic history and its soccer culture. The bottom line: Many Americans may admire and even envy the fervent supporters groups that surround Argentine soccer. I don’t. The soccer culture in the United States is much healthier for our sport and our country than is Argentina’s soccer culture.

This third letter will examine the complex interaction between two football sports – soccer and rugby – and the economic class matrix in which they’ve developed in Argentina (and elsewhere). But there is also a central message for an American readership. Looking ahead 40-50 years I can envision rugby football supplanting American football as the USA’s principal contact sport. It has happened before.

Watch rugby action here.

"Soccer is a gentleman’s game played by ruffians;

Rugby is a ruffian’s game played by gentlemen."

Rarely has that hoary British saying been more applicable than in Argentina. All Argentine men and boys love soccer, but as a competitive sport rugby is played almost exclusively by the sons of the upper middle class. Los Pumas, the Argentine national rugby team, is composed entirely of graduates of private colegios (high schools) and members of exclusive private clubs.

I can best illustrate the other end of the spectrum (soccer) by the following. Several decades ago I was chatting with my mother-in-law (whom I loved dearly and called "Mami") about racially mixed marriages.

"Yes," she said. "There was the case last year of the Italian princess who married a Brazilian soccer player. That was much criticized around here. Imagine, the poor princess! Married to a professional soccer player!"

I love soccer but soccer is my sons’ sport. I played rugby: University of California at Berkeley (1960-61); Washington Rugby Football Club (1965-68); American University (1969); and the immortal Turkey Thicket Rugby Club (1970-71). I retired when we moved to New Mexico and the Albuquerque Aardvarks RFC were traveling 400-500 miles (one-way) just to get a match on weekends.

A rugby match looks like total mayhem – 15-man sides (teams) racing around in soccer-type uniforms on a soccer-size pitch tackling each other for 80 minutes. It looks like the ultimate, violent contact sport, but it’s not. Plenty of cuts and bruises, sometimes a tooth knocked out (dentists love rugby), but rarely a broken bone or concussion (probably less than soccer) and absolutely none of the constant shocks that cause damage to the brains of American football players. Why? Both the Laws of the Game and the Gentlemen’s Code.

I’ll give examples of the Laws of the Game later in comparing rugby with American football (which I’ll call "gridiron" from now on), but examples of the Gentlemen’s Code are

• Play hard but clean. Don’t play dirty. In part, this is just self-preservation: if you get the reputation as a "dirty" player, the 15 men on the other side have innumerable opportunities for payback.

• Play also with a certain common sense level of restraint. For a season the hooker for the Washington RFC was a former Puma. His weekday job was as a surgeon. Who’s going to stomp on a surgeon’s hands?

• The referee’s word is law. Only a team’s captain can speak to the referee.

• Above all, the inviolable part of the Code is the obligation of the home side to host the visiting side to a beer bust after the match. Major Argentine rugby clubs typically have a clubhouse next to the pitch for the post-match party, including, of course, wonderful asado (barbecue).

This is the Code that applies to rugby union. Rugby league (popular in Welsh and British coal fields and mill towns) is truly "a ruffian’s game played by ruffians." For a taste of rugby league, watch "This Sporting Life," Richard Harris’s film debut, here.

In Argentina rugby has always been an amateur sport. Los Pumitas (the junior national team) always did well in international competition. But at the senior level the Pumas struggled because amateurs were competing against professionals from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and the Six Nations (England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales). In those countries, even when rugby was ostensibly an amateur sport, companies would employ talented ruggers whose full-time job really was to practice and play rugby (somewhat like the old Soviet Army ice hockey team). In more recent decades actual professional rugby clubs flourished. To play professionally, top Argentine ruggers would have to go abroad.

Until this year, that is. Argentina entered its first professional side – the Argentine Jaguares – in Super Rugby (five sides from New Zealand, five from Australia, eight from South Africa, and another new side from Tokyo). I was eager to go to the first home match ever of the Jaguares as were my brother-in-law Lalo (ex-pilar, or prop forward, from Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires), and nephews Ignacio (ex-pilar) and Diego (ex-tres/cuartos, or three-quarters back) – both from Colegio Cardinal Newman.

Argentine Jaguares v. Hamilton (NZ) Chiefs

The Saturday evening match would be at the soccer stadium of Primera División Velez Sarsfield, but El Fortín de Liniers also doubles as the home field for the Pumas (the national squad) and now the Jaguares. We parked a number of blocks from the stadium in the quiet, working class neighborhood of Liniers and began walking to the stadium. (Nobody approached us with an offer to "look after" our car as occurs at many soccer matches.) Though no organized singing could be heard, the crowd swelled and buzzed as we approached the blue-and-white stadium (Velez Sarsfield’s colors). I saw no more police around than would be handling vehicular and pedestrian traffic at RFK. After a quick hot dog at a carry-out that Diego frequents for Pumas matches (no choripan, darn!), we passed through the entrance gate, a ticket taker scanning our tickets. And that was it. No federal police patting every spectator down. In fact, nobody patting anybody down or peering into handbags and backpacks. This was a rugby crowd.

We entered the stadium (capacity: 49,540). It would be a sell-out (about 25,000) as the tribunas behind both goals had been blocked off and just the plateas would be occupied. I noted that, in contrast to El Nuevo Gasómetro where San Lorenzo plays soccer, there were electronic scoreboards, timeclocks, and a full video screen (complete with replays of the action as the match progressed).

There was a very untraditional something else, too – pom pom girls and a rock band (located in a tribuna). The pom pom girls performed at mid-field as ruggers went through pre-match warm-ups (and would at halftime, too). Apparently, Super Rugby decided it needed to present an American-style spectacle. It added nothing.

Fourteen of the Jaguares starting XV were Pumas, but the Hamilton (NZ) Chiefs were a veteran team, fielding several All-Blacks (New Zealand national team members), and were Super Rugby champions in 2012 and 2013. We were thrilled when the Jaguares led 14-13 at halftime. After the short intermission (it used to be only a five-minute break in my playing days), the Chiefs asserted their dominance, grinding their way to a 23-14 lead.

But with eight minutes left the Jaguares’ scrum half picked the ball out of a loose ruck at the Chiefs’ five yard line and dived over the goal line for a five-point "try." (In rugby, the ball must actually be touched to the ground over the goal line which is undoubtedly the origin of the gridiron term "touchdown"). The conversion kick from a near-impossible angle a couple yards from the "touchline" (sideline) sailed through the uprights. 23-21, Chiefs.

Then, per the Sky Sports report,

Within a minute the sell-out 25,000 crowd at Estadio Jose Amalfitani [El Fortin’s formal name] were back on their feet as a dazzling 90-metre handling move [involving five laterals] ended with substitute Matias Moroni diving over far out. Leading 2015 Rugby World Cup points scorer [Nicolás] Sanchez failed to convert, but Jaguares had a three-point advantage [26-23] with six minutes left.

Chiefs stormed back, moved into Argentine territory and kept the ball alive long enough for [Brad] Weber to dive over and stun the crowd.

It was a thrilling climax to a pulsating seven-try encounter full of running rugby. [Final score: Chiefs 30 Jaguares 26]

Here are the highlights again: Chiefs in white, Jaguares in black, referee in red.

The crowd exited peacefully both disappointed at having seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory but happy with a great match.

Post-Match Reflections

• It had been a very knowledgeable rugby crowd and the crowd had gone absolutely wild with the Jaguares’ final try, but I missed the mass chanting and singing characteristic of a soccer match. Of course, the Jaguares have no "tradition" (this being its all-time home debut) but maybe not chanting and singing in unison is also a local rugby tradition. If so, too bad.

• I’m tired of hearing long-in-the-tooth European players in MLS complaining about travel distances within the continental USA compared to European leagues. In Super Rugby the one-way distance from Buenos Aires to Johannesburg is 5,022 miles (roughly 10 in-flight hours); from Capetown to Wellington is 7,042 miles (14 hours); from Wellington to Buenos Aires, flying east across the Pacific, is 6,217 miles (12 hours); and from Buenos Aires to Tokyo is 11,419 miles (23 hours plus a lay-over).

• The fifth passenger in our drive to and from Velez Sarsfield’s stadium was Belisario, who had been a buddy of Diego’s from first grade through 13 years of Colegio Cardinal Newman and then law school. I was struck by how rare that would be in American society, particularly among college-educated professionals. I knew that our whole clan lived within 75 miles of Buenos Aires with the exception of Delcia and one second cousin (in Madrid). Almost every Sunday, my brother- and sister-in-law, their three children and spouses, and eight grandchildren gather for a family asado in their weekend cottage in Club Newman, a country located about 30 miles from the heart of Buenos Aires.

  Our own immediate Rusk family is scattered among Arlington, MA; East Burke, VT; Albuquerque, NM; Davidson, NC; Fort Campbell, KY; and, of course, Washington, DC. It’s a logistical challenge to get everyone together at least once a year – much less almost every weekend. (We did descend from all points of the compass on MetLife Stadium a couple of years ago for the Argentina-Brazil "friendly." Messi’s hat trick led the albicelestes to a 4-3 victory. It was heaven.) Such high geographic mobility reflects the reality that there are multiple centers of educational and economic opportunity in the USA whereas Greater Buenos Aires is the center of everything in Argentina.

  "Yes," Diego said in talking about this. "We have very tight relationships within the circle of family and closest friends. But, institutionally, we are too individualistic – each business, each labor union, each political party seeking only what it can get for itself. We don’t have institutions that unify us for the common good."

  Rugby v Gridiron

  If anything, gridiron grew out of rugby which, in turn, grew out of soccer when, in 1823, William Web Ellis, a student at the Rugby School, "with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game."

  Like gridiron, rugby is a ball-carrying, tackling sport, but with key differences.

• Unlike gridiron, with its hard surface helmets and shoulder pads, ruggers have virtually no protective equipment as anyone who has every bought a rugby shirt can testify. Forwards may have a little extra cotton padding in the shoulders; props and hookers will wear soccer-style shin pads and, along with second rows may wear leather or cloth ear muffs from time to time to prevent their ears getting ripped up in a scrum, but that’s it. Gridiron equipment promotes violent collisions and arguably causes injuries.

• Contact is allowed only around the rugby ball (which looks like a pregnant American football); if you’re going to get hit in rugby, you’re expecting it.

• The arms must be used in tackling; no using your body as a battering ram as in gridiron. Proper technique and self-preservation dictate that you tackle with your head behind the ball carrier’s body rather than across the ball carrier’s body (lest you break your collarbone).

• Like soccer, rapid ball movement is vital in rugby. Unlike gridiron, only when you have the ball right near the goal line does fighting for an extra yard become important. As the ball carrier is being (or about to be) tackled, he laterals the ball to a teammate. A tackle is intended to bring the ball carrier down, not stop him in his tracks.

• There is no blocking for the ball carrier allowed. Even screening a ball carrier is penalized as "shepherding." Banning blocking eliminates the repetitive hits that cause such brain damage among gridiron linemen.

• Though no forward passes are allowed, lateralling and (in close contact) handing off the ball to a teammate are basic offensive moves.

• Play is continuous and not a discrete series of short, explosive bursts of action as in gridiron. Gridiron linebackers and defensive backs would be well suited to rugby plus offensive backs and ends that could tackle. But the 300-lb behemoths that characterize NFL and big-time college linemen wouldn’t last 20 minutes as ruggers.

• Play is only stopped by the referee when an infraction occurs (typically leading to a turtle-like "scrum") or the ball goes "into touch"/out-of-bounds (leading to a line-out much like a jump ball in basketball). The giddy heights the principal jumpers achieve in rugby line-outs make Michael Jordan or Dr. J look positively earthbound, but in addition to the jumper’s own ability, he is also being boosted up into the air by a muscular teammate behind him in the line-out (which also wasn’t allowed in my day).

• Kicking the ball (whether a punt or dribble along the ground) can be an offensive weapon as the kicker and every teammate behind him is eligible to field a kicked ball as well as all opponents.

• The rules for loose rucks or mauls have been changed. In my day, as players packed around the loose ball on the ground, they could only play it out of the pile by heeling it back with their feet. Now, the tackled ball carrier can shove it back by hand with the referee indicating which team is controlling possession. This has eliminated a great deal of kicking and hacking in tight quarters.

• Finally, though up to six substitutions are now allowed, there is no specialized platooning as in gridiron. All ruggers must be able to tackle, carry the ball, lateral, and kick.

  Medical Issues

  A half century ago when I played, no substitutions whatsoever were allowed. The starting XV was expected to finish the 80-minute match. If you were injured to the degree that you couldn’t continue, your side played a man down.

  I remember an away match, pitting Washington RFC XV against Westchester RFC XV (north of New York City). The match ended 12 against 12. Midway through the second half I felt a sharp pain in my right rib cage. I pulled myself out of the scrum but continued playing as sort of a free safety to help out however I could.

  At the end of the match (we lost), I was walking into the emergency room of Bronxville Memorial Hospital, sweaty and dirty in full uniform, leaning on Delcia and grimacing while holding my side. I looked around the emergency room and six other ruggers were lying on hospital gurneys being sewed up or having casts put on. The ER doctor looked at me and looked at Delcia and asked "Are you two married?"

  "Yes."

  Sweeping his arm around the whole emergency room, he said "Are all you guys crazy?"

  My anecdote suggests that rugby is a dangerous game to play. It’s usually not (though it can be pretty hard on the outside quarter inch of you). In America the desire of middle-class parents to not have their sons play gridiron has been a driving force in the spectacular growth of youth soccer – at least, boys-style; the federal Title IX has been an equally powerful inducement for the growth of girls soccer.

With the evidence piling up almost daily that the thousands of little hits embedded in gridiron as a sport causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), parental rejection of youth gridiron will grow exponentially and probably severely diminish gridiron’s appeal as fan spectacle at collegiate and professional levels as well. Says Dr. Bennett Omalu, whose discovery of CTE in gridiron players is dramatized in the movie Concussion,

In my opinion… over 90% of players who play to the professional level have some degree of this disease. I have not examined any brain of a retired football player that came back negative.

This isn’t [about] banning football. Trust in the great American ingenuity. We can derive more intelligent, more brain-friendly ways we can play football. There are no rules that say we must play football the way it’s played today. Remember, how we play football still is not how we played 40 years ago [emphasis added].

Back to the Future

Try 110 years ago. According to the Washington Post, at least 45 gridiron players died from 1900 to October 1905, many from internal injuries, broken necks, concussions or broken backs. Appalled by the brutality of gridiron as then played, President Teddy Roosevelt pushed for rule changes to minimize the violence. According to The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football,

Following the [1905] season, Stanford and California switched to rugby while Columbia, Northwestern and Duke dropped football. Harvard president Charles Eliot, who considered football "more brutalizing than prizefighting, cockfighting or bullfighting," warned that Harvard could be next, a move that would be a crushing blow to the college game and the Harvard alum in the Oval Office. [Teddy] Roosevelt wrote in a letter to a friend that he would not let Eliot "emasculate football," and that he hoped to "minimize the danger" without football having to be played "on too ladylike a basis." Roosevelt again used his bully pulpit. He urged the Harvard coach and other leading football authorities to push for radical rule changes, and he invited other school leaders to the White House in the offseason.

From 1906 to 1914 The Big Game between the California Golden Bears and Stanford Cardinals was rugby and though a reformed gridiron was resumed by 1919, Cal and Stanford have played rugby continuously ever since. When for the only times rugby was declared an Olympic Games sport in 1920 and 1924, an American squad composed entirely of Bay Area ruggers from Cal, Stanford and Santa Clara upset France 8-0 and 17-3 to capture the gold medals.

For the Rio Olympics this summer rugby will return as an Olympic sport (Seven-a-Side this time). Ironically, the American Eagles (currently ranked 16th in the world) will be defending Olympic rugby champions. Check it out on TV.

On March 1st, while Delcia and I were in Buenos Aires, the news broke that the head gridiron coaches of the eight Ivy League universities had voted unanimously to ban full contact practices to reduce injuries. Can banning playing gridiron at all be so far behind in the Ivy League? (In the interest of full disclosure, an Internet search discloses that on that same day dozens of health professionals sent an open letter to the British government calling for a ban on schoolboy rugby. Probably any contact sport is bad for young, growing bodies.)

Looking ahead four or five decades, I can see soccer challenging baseball as the leading outdoor spectator sport and rugby having supplanted gridiron as the contact sport of choice in America.