Walking up to King's Field Saturday for the rugby round-robin tournament, the first thing that might catch one's eye is the 30-pack of Busch Light on top of a Chevy pick-up.

Not a muddy, beaten-down Chevy, though. After all, those attending one of the schools playing — Marquette, Notre Dame, Saint Louis and Lake Forest — are probably responsible for the truck, the beer and most of the SUVs that litter the landscape at the park.

While the team warms up, the fans (mostly other college students) are drinking and smoking and generally carrying on as if Saturday afternoon is just a natural extension of Friday night.

When Marquette, which still uses the "Warrior" moniker, takes the field against Notre Dame, the demeanor of the crowd doesn't change much, except perhaps the heckling, which gets louder.

Rugby may be one of the only sports where it is actually encouraged to good-naturedly rib people one knows on the team by yelling, "You suck!" with increasing emphasis or by stringing together your favorite profanities into a sentence.

The uniforms themselves are a combination of ballet and badass. A normal jersey is worn, usually torn and thoroughly grass-stained, with painfully-short running shorts and spandex underneath.

To the untrained eye, rugby looks more like some kind of a gang rumble than a sport, like a game untouched by 20th century additions of big money, endorsements and protective gear.

The basic rules include being allowed to only pass backwards and kick the ball forward. Most of the offense resembles a football sweep play or desperation kick-off return, with guys running in a line and waiting to lateral the ball just before they get taken down.

Although the action is intense and by nature violent, rugby is still a "gentleman's game," as junior captain Patrick Meier explained.

"After this we go and party with the other teams," he said. "We just leave it all on the field. Everyone's out there having a good time."

Marquette won its first game over Notre Dame, 28-0. But it's fairly obvious the score is secondary to the festivities of the day. And days such as these are what keep rugby aficionados around.

Like 1997 Marquette alumnus Scot Prunckle, who now coaches women's rugby at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and was on the sidelines.

He first got into rugby when he was visiting a friend's room in the now-defunct West Hall and saw a guy with blood coming out of his ears and dirt on his face.

"I thought he had got into a fight," Prunckle said. "I asked him what he'd been doing and he said he'd been playing rugby. Then he promptly fell down and went to sleep. It seemed like fun."

It seems the attention of the ladies doesn't hurt matters, either, according to team members.

"A lot of guys have girlfriends," said senior Joe Frank. "Not as many as the basketball players, but I'd say over half our team has girlfriends."

Leaving King's Field, the lasting impression is of a good day, not in the sense of wins and losses, but in the sense of competition and fun.

"You never forget your first ruck" someone's T-shirt reads, referencing a rugby play and something more obscene.

It would be hard to sum up the experience any better.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 12 2005.