Rugby’s Quiet Transatlanticism: A Sporty Anglican Communion

By Karlton Miko Tyack

Ivy Style contributing writer Karlton Miko Tyack holds an AM in Political Economy and Government and an AB in the History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University. Since August 2018, he has served as a Freelance Client Liaison and Client Liaison for Sotheby’s. This is a follow-up piece to his previous article The Style and Cultural Heritage of The Rugby Shirt. For more writings from Karlton, please visit Gap Years and Happy Hours.

Englishness abroad, a via media between football styles, and aggressive traditions by unaggressive congregants. Rugby connects a certain New England to a certain Old England.

From his quiet strength to his refreshingly apolitical outward constitution, my friend Charles is one of the world’s last English Gentlemen. He’s a polo tactical pivot, chooses gin with a whisper of vermouth, and puts jam before cream. Foremost for today, he was a rugby fly-half.

As a boy, Charles stumbled upon the historical documentary This is America, Charlie Brown bundled with the Peanuts Thanksgiving Special. Fascinated with England’s role in shaping North American culture, he wrote countless papers about the Mayflower Compact and the Virginia Company at boarding school.

 

His first US visit was to my hometown, Los Angeles, to which he responded, “You lot really took our culture and ran with it” (Reminder, Chuck: Spain, not England, claimed California). To the Midwest: “Everything really is bigger here.” University then brought him to New England, where he finally saw the Transatlantic connection, appreciably on the rugby pitch.

Common Languages

 

George Bernard Shaw referred to England and the US as two countries separated by a common language. For many, this is also true of English rugby and American football. In football and rugby, scoring touchdowns and tries are more important than kicking goals. Downs and tackles are also limited, respectively. Yet this similar exchange only makes spectator fans of one sport more confused about the other. For Americans learning to watch rugby, it can feel like learning a new dialect, which is sometimes more difficult than learning a brand-new language. At least with a new language, you’ve no expectation of what a word “should” sound like.

Still, in the novel Brotherhood: When West Point Rugby Went to War, Martin Pengelly writes, in the US, “…rugby was rare, kept alive at Ivy League schools… and in clubs in coastal cities often formed by migrants from the empire.” Like the Episcopal Church and the all-but-extinct, non-rhotic Brahmin dialect, rugby culture is an oft-unnoticed family estate for kin separated by the Atlantic.

Harvard, The Boston Game, A Place for Gentlemen to Pound Each Other

 

Let’s head to where this English game first landed Stateside: Harvard University. Put those paddles down, though. We’re not crossing the Chahls to Harvard Stadium. Follow me instead to the law school’s Langdell Hall, a Neoclassical structure built on hallowed ground. Formerly Jarvis Field, here occurred the first recorded New World rugby-ish match. 1874. Harvard beat McGill. 3-0.

 

England-educated Stephen Chase is said to have brought the game to America, though it was likely a group effort by British expats. However, I’d like to spotlight a Harvardian by the name of Mr. Gerrit Smith Miller, Gat to his mates—the reason Harvard rugby had to seek out-of-conference opponents. Know that at this time, American, rugby, and association football, all born from mob football, were still developing into three distinct games. Gat founded The Oneida Football Club in 1862, which played a brutal combination of association and rugby football called “The Boston Game.”

After representatives from Yale, Columbia, and Princeton held a conference to reconcile football codifications, many Ivy League schools settled into a style resembling contemporary soccer.

Harvard skipped that conference.

Perhaps it was pride in their local game, or perhaps there were just more Anglophiles in Cambridge, but Crimson footballers wanted to continue testing fate with this vicious, ball-handling variation.

“The Brahmins, the gentry, the titled. We’re already gentlemen,” Charles said to me over Glencairns of Glen Garioch. “Can’t we have a place where we can just bloody pound each other?”

The Culture of The Empire’s Rugby Men: An Excerpt From Ivy Style

 

In a sartorially-focused Ivy Style article, which I consider a partner piece to this essay, I explore rugby’s cultural heritage of English politeness and Shakespearean honour:

When comparing rugby to association football, or soccer, fans invoke a quote attributed to Winston Churchill (perhaps apocryphally): “…one is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans; the other a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.” The film Invictus accurately portrays rugby as the choice upper-class sport in 1995 South Africa. Moreover, rugby players are customarily deferential to referees. When an ornery Tobias Botes raised his voice during a Treviso versus Munster match, Referee Nigel Owens famously told Botes, “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m the referee here, not you… If I hear you shouting again, I will be penalizing you. This is not soccer.”

Within the Anglosphere’s gentlemanly circles, the cultural tension between mannerly class and brute strength is truly ancient—from medieval knights to merchant adventurers to today’s Ivy-educated deal closers. Infamously, King Charles, then Prince, had his nose broken by a school bully during a rugby match at Gordonstoun. And as someone who’s spent a lot of time around the sport, I know that ruggers love Shakespeare. “He to-day that sheds blood with me/Shall be my brother” from Henry V is posted in many a locker room. Players often reference the “Once more unto the breach…” passage to hype up before matches.

England’s Soft Power and the Church of Football

 

Two things to know about me, other than my rugby fandom: First, I’m Episcopalian, baptized at All Saints Beverly Hills, confirmed at Trinity Manhattan. Second, I read Joseph Nye’s Soft Power far too many times at university. Pin that before this brief theology refresher: Episcopalianism is the American branch of Anglicanism. This Church of England was established by Henry VIII, breaking the country away from Papal authority (some mix-up about heirs and annulments).

From the deployment of Christmas crackers to the flambéing of brandy-soaked pudding, I’d no idea how many of my family’s Episcopal traditions were imported until I married an English person whose customs were immediately, oddly familiar. Similarly, the English language is one of Britannia’s most important soft power assets. It’s so implanted, we Americans rarely think about the fact that we speak another country’s language. I imagine modern-day Harvard ruggers aren’t necessarily connecting their sport’s culture with customs of The Empire’s Rugby Men either.

Let’s call William Webb Ellis the Henry VIII of football. According to legend, this Anglican clergyman in Rugby, Warwickshire, got so excited during a football match, he picked up the ball and started running with it. Thus, just as Hen created a new regional church, that of England, Willy invented a new regional football, that of the town of Rugby. The only difference is that no heads were offed during Ellis’s disunioning. Although given rugby’s violence, I can’t exactly guarantee that.

Medieval mob-style football had one objective and one rule: Move the ball from one side of the field to the other by any means possible. No manslaughter.

Soccer and rugby are two denominations derived from this ancient church. The 1874 Harvard McGill match not only brought rugby to America but also began the codification of American football, creating the third denomination. Truly, rugby is the via media between association and American football, though both are more popular than rugby in their respective nations. That is, outside of certain Transatlantic congregations. Right, Charles?