Sport: Rugby Am

Rugby Américain

From Paris to the Pyrenees last week Frenchmen were reading fantastic accounts of a troupe of giant "rugbymen américains" who were invading the provinces of France, "dressed in gold helmets like Roman emperors" and leaping at one another "like fighting cocks." More than 25,000 curious Parisians had watched them last fortnight in the Parc des Princes. Gendarmes were called out to handle 2,000 people who tried to crash the gate. "The giants kneeled down and tried to frighten one another with grimaces, then rushed headlong at one another. . . . Legs and arms got so mixed that the field, strewn with wounded players, looked like a battleground after the charge."

These 22 "rugbymen américains," led by a onetime Notre Dame Horseman named Jim Crowley, had been imported by the Paris-Soir to demonstrate their outlandish game—"a game so brutal that it was banned in the U. S. by the first President Roosevelt, and finally universities were allowed to play it, but only between October and January like a sort of hunting season."

Sportswriters agreed that "rugby américain" would never catch on in France because "it was too much like an autobus collision." The part of the game the Parisians liked best was the huddle, "when they gather to cheer . . . before each play." At the opening game confused spectators, uncertain when to cheer, decided after a few plays that the huddle was the logical one. The equally confused U. S. footballers, who—unable to hear their quarterbacks—misunderstood their signals, wondered whether the acoustics would be better in Toulouse, Marseille, Bordeaux.