History of the UMRFC

Bert Sugar Recalls

By Bert Sugar, UMRFC Founder
October 2009 Read | Download pdf

The Early Years of Michigan Rugby

By Mike Burrows, 1st UM Captain
Spring, 1959 Read | Download pdf

The Transformation of Rugby
into Football at Michigan

by Michael Lisi - August, 1987 Read | Download pdf

Bert Sugar Recalls Earliest Days of UMRFC.

Letter written to commemorate UMRFC 50th Anniversary. October 2009

It all began one late-late night, or maybe it was the morning after, back in the spring of 1959…

There I was in the living room of my fraternity house, so hung over from the night before when I had to use my barstool as a walker to get back to the frat house that now even my hiccups were slurred, trying my damndest to focus my eyes by reading the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. And what to wondering eyes — or maybe just one eye — should I see but a small article in front of the magazine that told of Harvard and Yale going off to Bermuda to play in some rugby tournament.

So the thought — less a brainstorm than a thought drizzle — occurred to me, why can't "we" do that, go to a rugby tournament? Only trouble was, like the old joke about Tonto saying to the Lone Ranger after he had said "we" have to take on a horde of Indians, and Tonto had replied, "Where did you get that 'we,' White Man?" There was no "we" there. Not only was I alone in the frat house, sitting there so hung over I was trying to play a pizza on the stereo, and waiting for the light of day to hit the brew of the night, but there was no rugby team to constitute a "we."

By the time I had sobered up, sorta, another thought had invaded my by-now slowly awaking brain: why not form a rugby club?

And so I took an ad out in the Michigan Daily announcing the formation of a rugby team, pretentiously calling it "The Ann Arbor Rugby and Cricket Club," or something like that. And threw in a "come-on:" free beer for all who attended.

Well, to my surprise, over 100 so-called rugby players answered the ad. Unsurprisingly, most were there for the free beer. However, amongst their number I found some who were sincerely interested more in rugby than in the free beer. And most were from countries where rugby was played, countries such as Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, et cetera, etc., etc…

There was Robbie MacFarland, from Scotland, Bajii Packawala from India, Mich Oprea from Romania, Brian (and here, after 50 years, I've forgotten his last name) from Australia, and a handful of others, includine a few Americans who more or less "knew about" the sport, like Dick McClear and Marv Wilensik and Ron Riosti. Together, we agreed to form a club of sorts.

We even began to practice, no simple chore since we didn't have a rugby ball. And so I volunteered to go into Detroit and find a ball. More importantly, I was able to find booklets explaining the rules of the game, which I passed out to the uninitiated. I mean, how in hell were we supposed to play this game — and, hopefully, go to Bermuda or wherever — if we didn't know how to play the game?

And so it was that we held our first-ever practice, down at Wines Field. It was about as organized as a prison riot, with several of us running around the field with rule books in our hands trying mightily to figure out what it was we were doing. Fortunately, there were a few who did know, and they "coached" us, even as we bumbled through practice. Even Yours Truly, who had been appointed captain of the team, who didn't know what the hell I was doing.

As practice followed practice, we eventually began to resemble a team — helped by several who had joined our ranks — Tom Burroughs, who had played at Dartmouth, and Mike Burrows who helped make order out of the chaos I had created, plus a couple of football players, Harry Newman, Jr., and Ken Tureaud, a Canadian who knew the game, both of whom were probably intrigued by watching players throw the ball backwards instead of forward.

Before long, secure in our ability to at least know the game and actually work as a team, we started thinking about challenging some team or other. But there were none to challenge, the cupboard being bare of other teams in the area to challenge. We even had the "chutzpah" to proclaim ourselves "Champions of the Big Ten," there being no other teams in the Big Ten at the time! Someway, somehow, one school did accept our challenge: the University of Toronto, champions of Canada (or, so they said), who came down to Ann Arbor to play us one March day in '59.

As they congregated in the law fraternity house at 1212 Hill Street, in an effort to get that proverbial "home-field advantage," I managed to feed them enough liquor to less drown them than to irrigate them. And if that weren't enough, to provide them with companionship some dates of questionable morals to "greet" them (and don't ask how I knew them!) as well as having my dog, Ron-Collie, named after the Pope, to yap at their doors at about three in the morning.

And lo and behold, with Burroughs, MacFarland, Packawala, Riosti, et al, playing their damndest, we managed to beat them 10-6 — with even Yours Truly contributing with a "try."— clad in our Lippman Delicatessen uniforms which we had borrowed. We now began to take ourselves seriously, even if others hadn't. We were now a "team" in the truest sense of the word and began to recruit others — like Froncie Gutman, a pre-med student who had been quarterback at Purdue, another pre-med student, Dave Dingman who, not incidentally, would become the first American to climb Mt. Everest — and several others.

As we began to grow, there were several close calls. Literally. The first came from the University of Michigan band. See, when we practiced on Wines Field, we practiced — and didn't give a damn that others wanted to use it. Seems that in several of those practices, when the U of M marching band showed up, they demanded we vacate the field. Our answer was something along the lines of "get lost," and now they wanted their field. The second came from the offices of athletic director Fritz Crisler (better known as "Jesus Crisler") demanding to know why his football players were playing rugby rather than participating in spring practice. Hell, we responded, we were undefeated and "Champions of the Big Ten," and the 1958 Michigan football team had been 2-6-1. In short, we paid them no nevermind.

In the meantime, in between time, someone or other had arranged, through a friend, a series of games for us out in California — against UCLA, Claremont College, and San Diego State. And so, we embarked to the West (or "Left") Coast, many of the team in hearses, which we obtained from a dealer in Detroit who wanted them delivered to California, the rest of us in a chartered plane which looked like the one Amelia Earhart had been lost in. Anyhow, we didn't win any of the three games, but had one helluva time out in California, which is by this time what we thought rugby was all about.

And over the succeeding 50 years is still what it is all about. Hell, back then rugby was the most fun I ever had with my clothes on, and for the subsequent 50 years I hope it has been for you, too.

Here's for 50 more years of playing rugby and having fun. And the hope that 50 years from now, many of you will have the same fond remembrances of the game and the University of Michigan Rugby Club as I have now.

Bert Randolph Sugar

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The Early Years of Michigan Rugby

Letter written to commemorate UMRFC 40th Anniversary. April 1999
By Mike Burrows, 1st UM Captain 1959

Either Bert Sugar called me or I saw an ad. He'd placed at the International Center. He and some of his law fraternity brothers wanted to get a rugby team started. At our first meeting I described the game to them. We had our first scrimmage on Ferry Field. There were 10 to 20 of us: his group of law students and some foreign students who had played the game and who I guess had seen Bert's ad.

Bert said he'd try to schedule a game with the University of Toronto and find us a place to play. My role was to get our team ready. We were a rag-tag bunch --- law students who had played football but didn't yet have any rugby instincts or know the rules, and a disparate collection of mostly British Commonwealth types with varying degrees of playing experience. We practiced; the match was set up. Luckily the Canadians were happy to travel to Ann Arbor.

Bert found orange jersey's for us with the declaration Lippman's Trailblazers on the chest. We played on Wine's Field. Each half of the match was refereed by a different person, both from Ann Arbor, because neither could be there for the whole match. Remarkably, we won, 10-6. We were overjoyed; we couldn't believe it. (The Canadians regarded their whole trip mainly as a chance to visit a big American campus, and so didn't really take the match too seriously.)

I have a yellowed sheet of paper recording the fact that the roster on that, our first team to take the field, was Brian Browne (fullback), Baji Palkiwala and Mich Oprea (right and left wings), Ron Reasti and Dick McClear (right and left centers), Peter McKenna (stand off), Dave Dingman (scrum half), Arturo Crenovitch (number eight), ? Warren and ? Burnett (right and left wing forwards), Mike Burrows (captain) and Bert Sugar (right and left second row), Bob Blair and ? Smith (right and left props) and Tom Burris (hooker). One of our two referees was Brian Parker from England; I can't remember the name of the other one. Maybe someone can help me with the gaps in this record.

1959-60

During the 1959-60 academic year, I was back in England. The young club survived and I believe played a match that year against the University of Wisconsin at some intermediate venue. As I remember it, Ann Arbor, Madison and St. Louis were then the only places in the mid-west where rugby was played.

1960-64

I came back to Ann Arbor for the Fall of 1960, staying for four more years. The club was by then sufficiently organized for us to have on our schedule several matches in both the Fall and Spring seasons. Initially, our competition was wholly Canadian. We played Windsor, Sarnia, Brantford, London, Guelph, Toronto Scottish, Toronto Irish, The University of Toronto, Oshawa. Gradually other American schools acquired rugby clubs. I remember playing Notre Dame in Ann Arbor, for example. They were good athletes, but there was enough hesitation in their game arising from lack of rugby instinct that we were able to win.

All our home games were at Wine's Field. (Or should that be Wines Field?) Typically the ground was as hard as asphalt, a result of its main purpose being the practice field for the Michigan Marching Band and their pounding feet. And being lined for football, it wasn't wide enough. (We were used to it; the problem was felt more by our visitors.)

One high point for me was going up to Toronto in the Spring of 1961 for the Ontario Seven-a-Side Tournament, U of M's first time there. Towards the end of a heady day's competition, in a semi-final win popular with the Canadian crowd, we beat Balm Beach, which had been mowing its opponents down until that point. We lost in the final to Toronto Scottish, but in a grand gesture of international goodwill marking our notable first-time achievement at the tournament, the Toronto Scottish players handed over to us their winners trophies, engraved pewter tankards. I still have mine.

Running the team at that time was Froncie Gutman, who'd played quarterback for Purdue. Other Americans whose names I can remember playing then were John McHale, John Appleford, Dave Dingman (who was to become a hero on the first successful American assault of Mount Everest), Bill Longhurst, Jim Canfield, Tom Dalgleish and Ed Kurz. There was also a bunch of British Commonwealth and Irish types: John Smith, Bob Nicholls, Tom Triggs, Alan Levett, Whata Winiata, Desmond McVeigh, Terry Robinson. Other names would certainly come back to me if I got into reminiscing with players from that era.

Froncie and his friends in the Medical School were great players, and we would usually win our home games. But they were reluctant to travel or attend practices, no doubt a result of a grueling medical school schedule, so the other less skillful club members who did travel and practice resented not getting to play in our home games and began dropping out. The membership dwindled. Then we found ourselves canceling our away games at the last minute because we couldn't get fifteen people together. The club was going down hill fast. We were getting a reputation for being unreliable. We were expecting next to find the Canadian clubs refusing to schedule fixtures with us.

We all met together in, I believe, late Fall of 1962, to face this problem. I was afraid the club was just going to fade way entirely. So I volunteered to take over the club to try to get it back on its feet. Some of my motivation was that I didn't want to see fail a club that I felt was in part my baby.

I instituted a vigorous recruiting campaign, including ads., rugby movies, promotional meetings, and a declaration that players would be considered for home games only if they showed up at practice and were willing to travel to away games. I also made it our policy to create as many teams in the club as there were players available to fill them, regardless of ability. It worked, in the sense that the membership mushroomed and we were able to keep our scheduling commitments. On the other hand, our winning record nose-dived. But that was the price I was willing to pay while we were in a building mode. Whata Winiata's support and effort were an invaluable component in this effort. He was the complete rugby player who also possessed a talent for organization.

Two high points for me during this period were, first, setting up and playing in a tour by the Michigan Rugby Club in the New York City area in, I believe, the Spring of '63. We played Columbia, The New York Rugby Club, Princeton and, I believe, Manhattan. We lost all four matches, but had a great time. The second high point was going with the team to a Spring rugby festival in '64 on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago with teams from all over the mid-west. The sun shone, the breeze ruffled the surface of Lake Michigan, the new grass was bright green and the multicolored uniforms of the different teams celebrated the festival. This was confirmation that rugby had finally firmly established itself in the mid-west.

Fall of '64 and After

I left Michigan in the Summer of '64. There were so many members in the club that Fall that the club was split into a Blue division and a Maize division. One was run by Whata; the other by his fellow New Zealander, Alan Levett, also a capable guy. There are stories to be told about that era, and the disputes between the two of them, but I'm not the one to tell them. I'd left already.

Please contact me with corrections and additions, especially personal details to add personality to the names.

Mike Burrows
13 Rumford Road
Lexington, MA02420
mburrows@gis.net
781-674-0317
4/15/99

P.S. It could be argued that since American Football evolved from Rugby Football, introduced to the US in the latter half of the last century, the current U. of M. Rugby Club is strictly speaking a Second Coming. Keeping this in mind clarifies what we are celebrating in 1999.

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The Transformation of Rugby
into Football at Michigan

by Michael Lisi - August, 1987

The rugby played by Michigan's first intercollegiate rugby team in 1879 was a slower, less elegant form of rugby, but it was rugby nonetheless. Wolverine sports historians tend to regard the rugby years (roughly 1876-1883) as, at most, the clumsy period before true gridiron football came to Ann Arbor. I, for one, regret that rugby ever gave way to football. With a little help from the collections of the Bentley Historical Library at U of M it is now possible to describe how and why rugby became football here at the University of Michigan.

Rugby first took hold in the U.S. in the 1870's but by the end of the 1880's the game, although still called "rugby" in some places, was unmistakably gridiron (i.e. American football). How does one distinguish between the two games? Rugby has several unique features. First, only rugby has that strange formation of straining bodies known as a scrum. Next, and this is usually a surprise to new players, blocking, or obstructing access to the ball carrier, is strictly forbidden in rugby. Third, as in soccer and hockey, an offsides rule prohibits players downfield from the ball from participating in play until put on-side by their own retreat or the advance of another member of their team. Finally, play is continuous-- possession changes only when one team wrests the ball from the other, or after a team scores or there is an infraction of the rules.

Each of these features disappeared in the U.S. game by 1883 to be replaced by several new features, the hallmarks of gridiron football. The line of scrimmage replaced scrums. Offsides and obstruction penalties were abandoned and blocking and down-field interference were allowed. Teams were allowed three, and then four "downs" to advance the ball ten yards or be forced to surrender possession. Even player positions changed, so that a "quarterback" emerged as the primary ball handler.

Rugby at U of M changed each time the Michigan team traveled east to play eastern universities or colleges. Rugby was first played here in 1876, when intramural sports teams began playing by British rugby union rules, as published that year in The Michigan Chronicle. Harvard adopted the same rules (the rugby union rules were first codified in England in 1871) after playing McGill University at Cambridge in 1874. Columbia and Princeton also adopted these rules, but each school gave them a slightly different interpretation. As a result, matches between the three eastern schools were marked by constant conflict. In 1876 the three eastern schools formed the Intercollegiate Foot Ball Association (the "IFA") for the purpose of clarifying the rules. Yale was admitted to the IFA in 1879.

Michigan's first intercollegiate rugby match actually took the team west to play Racine College in Chicago in May of 1879 (the complete story appeared in the last newsletter).

Rugby of that period must have been much less dynamic than today's game. Scrums were conducted on the British model and it was not unusual for one scrum to last several minutes. The object, after the put-in by the referee (not the scrumhalf-- the ball belonged to neither side) was for each pack to drive the opposing pack off the ball, or to wheel the scrum and somehow steal the ball. Heeling the ball backward, called "shirking" by the English, was forbidden. The ball's emergence from the scrum was, at best, unpredictable.

Tackled players were not required to release the ball. A premium was placed upon kicking, both for goal and field position, with a kick for goal counting four points versus one point for a try. Most of the time the ball was kicked from the ground, while in motion or when dead, and without touching it with the hands.

Michigan played its second intercollegiate rugby match against the University of Toronto on November 1, 1879, in Recreation Park, a private sports park located one mile north of the Detroit River on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. The closely contested match ended in a tie. Michigan dominated overall, but according to The Michigan Chronicle: "Toronto played a strong game, and in almost every individual point seemed to excel; Gwynne and Woodruff can hardly be equaled by us in running and dodging; it was all Chase could do to take care of the big-boned MacDougal in the scrimmage; while when tackled, they have a sly way of passing the ball to a player behind them. They do not throw it, but hand it back, and in close play, owing to their familiarity with the Association game, they are quicker with their feet and work the ball ahead better."

One year later, on November 6, 1880, Michigan defeated the University of Toronto at Toronto, one goal and one try to nothing. Already The Michigan Chronicle lists one of the Michigan players as a "quarterback" (the position was a Yale innovation), but still recounts the occurrence of scrum upon scrum in the match. Both teams played 11 men, as was done in their earlier match and in Michigan's first match in 1879. The 1876 IFA rules set the number of players at 15, but in 1877 and 1878 several IFA matches were played with 11 payers per side, the usual complement in Association football (i.e., soccer).

When the Michigan rugby team went East in November of 1881 they were playing a more traditional rugby game than their eastern counterparts. Michigan lost three relatively close matches, all played under the 1871 union rules, as modified by the IFA. In the space of six days, Michigan was defeated by Yale 11-0, Princeton 13-4, and Harvard 4-0. The offsides and obstruction rules remained in place, but were honored only in the breach by the eastern teams. An 1878 IFA rule change required a tackled player to release the ball. Under an 1880 IFA innovation, the ball was put back into play by a player standing over the ball and using his foot to "snap-it-back." The fellow who first received the ball from the "snap-back" was called the quarterback. Princeton pioneered a running game off of the snap-back in which the ball carrier was trailed closely by a teammate on either side, presenting an attacking wedge which discouraged any would-be tacklers. Although the practice was a violation of the rules, it was tolerated and soon the trailing teammates caught up with and moved in front of the runner. True blocking was born.

Between 1876 and 1878 scrums among the IFA teams changed completely. The American packs, lacking a tradition in rugby and with little regard for the British rules, reached out for the ball with their feet and tried to kick it backward to their backs. With all 16 forwards thrashing at the ball with their feet, the practice of binding together to form a scrum made little sense. The scrum was abolished altogether by the IFA in 1878. Forwards soon spread out across the field along a "line of scrimmage" to cover on defense, bunching together on offense to shield the snap-back of the ball to the quarterback.

When Michigan returned east in 1883, the IFA rules had changed even more radically. Wesleyan defeated Michigan by a score of 14 to 6. Yale trounced Michigan 42-0! The account of the Yale match in The Michigan Argonaut complains that Yale played an "off-side" game, taking every advantage of the rules which the referee would allow. The ball was a new "livelier" ball, smaller and blown-up much more tightly than the large"balloon" ball to which Michigan was accustomed. The livelier ball gave an edge to the eastern teams, who played a pop-kick and converge style of game, as opposed to the traditional running, punting game favored by Michigan.

More significantly, an 1882 IFA rule change threw out the old possession rules and instituted a new series of three downs of possession for each side. Unless a first down was acquired by advancing the ball forward ten yards within three attempts, possession was surrendered to the other side. This most striking of innovations came about as a result of widespread public protest about tactics which were used for the first time in two matches played between Princeton and Yale in 1880 and 1881. The matches are known as the "block games".

In the first block game, Princeton exploited a gap in the rules which became apparent after scrums were abolished. The new snap-back and line of scrimmage rules allowed for retention of the ball, but not its surrender. In both 1880 and 1881, Princeton found itself in the position of needing only to tie Yale in order to claim the IFA championship. In the 1880 game, with Yale threatening to score, Princeton went into its infamous "block-defense." A Princeton player in his own end would toss the ball backwards to a Princeton man standing in goal, for a "safety." Princeton was then entitled to bring the ball out to its own 22 meter line and to put the ball back into play by toeing it through the mark. Princeton would pick up the ball and run, but when threatened with losing the ball, the pass backwards, safety, and 22 meter plays were used repeatedly to retain possession. The result was a boring match lacking any offensive action. The ball stayed in Princeton's end the whole time, yet Princeton was crowned 1880 IFA champion after a final score of 0-0 in the match.

To combat the Princeton block tactics, at the next IFA rules meeting safeties were assigned a penal value. In the event of a tie, the team with the fewest safeties would be declared the winner. However, Princeton immediately recognized a further gap in the rules. The playing area of the rugby pitch originally included imaginary extensions of the goal lines and the touch lines, creating a square at each of the four corners of the pitch running on into infinity. These squares were known as "in goal", and although they were behind the goal line, they were not part of the goal area. When the ball was passed into one of these areas, it was called a "touch in goal" and was treated similar to a safety, except that a touch in goal was not subject to the new safety penalty.

Princeton went into its block defense again in the 1881 IFA championship match by passing the ball into the in-goal area. This time however, Yale countered with identical tactics. The game ended in a scoreless tie, with the ball being kicked or run forward only six times during the entire match. Much to Princeton's surprise, Yale was awarded the 1881 championship on a technicality.

Returning to Michigan's 1883 tour of the east, after the 42-0 loss to Yale, Michigan caught on to the new rules and style of play and succeeded in holding Harvard to a scoreless tie. The Harvard match was followed by a 17-5 victory against Stevens Institute. Success under the new gridiron rules and the prospect of being left behind in the forward progress of collegiate football caused Michigan to drop rugby union rules.

Michigan fielded strong gridiron teams in 1884 and 1885. In 1884 Michigan played Albion for the first time, taking an easy victory. Other conquests were the Peninsulars of Detroit, the Windsors of Canada, and a strong select-side team from the Chicago area. The 1886 team won all of its games. Adoption of the new rules led to nothing but success for the Michigan team for the next decade. There was no turning back.

Born in 1876, first tested against another college in 1879, Michigan rugby was all but discarded by Michigan intramural and intercollegiate teams by the end of 1883. However, rugby was reborn here in 1959, and continues to flourish today. The modern game is faster, more action-packed (the ball is actually in play anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes in an average rugby match, as opposed 3 or 4 minutes in the average football game) and more exciting to watch than football.

In an upcoming issue the story of the 1959 return of rugby to U of M will be told.

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