Getting a head start on rugby

MELROSE-- David Rudzinsky was on the sidelines, rifling through an equipment bag, past balls and cones, looking for something so he could move on with his youth rugby practice at Pine Banks Park.

The first thing one notices, though, is what looks like a pink-purple bruise on the inside of his left forearm. You figure there has to be some really cool rugby war story behind the mark, maybe him being at the bottom of a scrum and some guy putting him in some kind of wrestling move or digging cleats into his arm.

So you ask, because you think that whatever he says, he'll produce an answer justifying rugby as "elegant violence" or as football for "real men."

He looks up. "Oh this? It's a birthmark," says the 44-year-old as he plucks a set of flags out of the bag and runs back to the field, where a number of knee-high kids are waiting for him to spell out their next drill.

Rugby as it's perceived isn't at all rugby as Rudzinsky is teaching it to a group of about 30 boys who come to the park every Thursday as part of the Mystic River Youth Rugby Club.

It's not the traditional midsummer sport, but it's attracting kids.

In its second year, the team from Mystic River is one of five that make up the Boston Youth Rugby program, drawing players from Boston, Canton, Acton and Worcester.

The "flags" will be worn by the kids because rugby in their world is completely non contact. Some of the kids are as young as 6, others are 14-year-olds about to make their way into high school. The flags are what make it all work.

It's less about the body-tackling and head-butting, and more about the running and the passing that gets the ball up and down the field, and leads to scores.

"It's become more of a sport of fitness," said Rudzinsky, who has played for a Mystic River rugby club for more than 20 years. "Running and training and stuff, and a little less of the crazy stuff, because rugby has a history of being, you know, a crazy game."

Rudzinsky has two of his sons in the program, Mike and Max, and they take to the game as if it were encoded in their DNA.

They call Mike the player-coach, and he looks every bit the role. He's only 14, but he's been around rugby about 13 of those years. Standing around in a backward cap, T-shirt, and shorts, he carries himself like one of his father's assistant coaches, albeit a few feet shorter.

"I completely grew up around the game," Mike said. "I was like 1 year old and I was sitting around the sidelines watching my father run around playing rugby, hitting people. And I would always go to his games, and I'd always get into it."

Charlie Stacey is a 60-year-old man. He's played for a laundry list of rugby teams, and still plays for a team based in Boston.

His son, Peter, is only 10, but Charlie sits him down and talks strategy. Schools like Malden Catholic and St. John's Prep have active rugby programs, and Charlie could see Peter playing rugby in high school in a few years, but he's mostly excited about seeing him learn the basics from Rudzinsky.

"He can explain one little facet" at a time, Stacey says of Rudzinsky. He stretches out his arms, miming the motions. "He can say, 'This is how you run with the ball. The reason you do that is so you can throw the ball to the left or the right. The reason you do that is so you can unload it faster.' He's breaking it down into such small little compounds."

Simon Lemming is a New Zealand native, and there, everyone's into rugby. "When the country loses," says Lemming, "the whole country goes into a gloom."

In New Zealand, says Lemming, you grow up with a different kind of education. It isn't reading, writing, and arithmetic -- it's beer, racing, and rugby.

The game is in his blood, and he wants the same for his son, Charles, a skinnier, sleeker, 12-year-old version of Simon. Charles Lemming has a freckled face and the same mop of hair, sans the gray.

When Simon first brought Charles out for the team last year, Charles wasn't big on playing. But it's grown on him, and now he thinking about playing in high school and maybe even college.

"My dad played rugby a lot, and I want to follow his footsteps," says Charlie Lemming.

And all things considered, his dad is more than willing to show him the way.

"Here it's not a place where rugby, racing, and beer are the three Rs. So, you have to keep bringing him along and try and give him a sense of what the game is and why it's important."

From the fence, Simon Lemming watches his son run with the other kids in what, to the untrained eye, looks like chaos. It makes him think of the June 30 match between New Zealand and Australia -- a 20-15 upset victory for Australia that he's already willing to call one of the sport's epic matches. In a way, watching these kids reminds him of that game, and in a way it doesn't.

"That's the pinnacle," Simon Lemming said. "This is the beginning."