By Nicolette Grant
For the Daily Titan

Jonathan Arroyave tries to break free from four UCSD defenders. Photo Courtesy of Paul Rudman.

Dressed like soccer players and playing a sport often compared to football, Cal State Fullerton’s Rugby club stormed the field this Sunday for their first preseason game against the University of California, San Diego. After three hours the comparisons slowly dwindled away and Rugby proved itself a sport in its own.

“Continuous motion (makes the game) much more engaging than football,” Randy Odhiambo said, who is a junior Public Relation’s major and marketing coordinator for the team.

Team Captain Jonathan Arroyave said the only comparison to football is in hitting.

“Football is more of a power sport,” Arroyave said. “In rugby not only do you do that but you are also on the field the entire time.”

Unlike football, the ball in rugby is in constant motion. At any time a player must prepare for being on offense or defense because of this streaming style of play.

While Rugby normally is formatted in two forty-minute halves, Sunday’s game was separated into three different quarters. In the first quarter Fullerton scored three trys, similar to touchdowns, followed by two kicks.

Each try being worth five points, and kick worth two resulted in a 19-0 lead.

Coach Phil Grieve began the first quarter with his starters. He then made sure to rotate the rest of the players so that every player played for at least two quarters.

Last season the team had close to 20 members with fifteen players needed on the field at a time. This season the team has doubled in size creating a new element of depth.

This year marks the team’s 25th year as a club and team President Jeff O’Brien, a senior business and kinesiology major, hopes to lead
his team from Division III into Division II during this important season.

Last year the Titans were two games shy of moving up a division after falling short in a playoff game to USC.

“We are starting just as good [as last year] if not better,” said O’Brien.

Rugby is a relatively unappreciated sport in America despite it being played in over 200 countries. Now with the sport being reinstated into the Olympics it is going to be difficult for American’s to avoid the second most played sport in the world, second to soccer and above basketball.

Since Fullerton does not have the traditional football team on campus the rugby team hopes to satisfy students craving for a high contact and highly competitive sport.

Tijeron Black, a senior psychology and Business major said, “If you miss the raw contact come to rugby. Contact is (here).”

Despite the brute physicality of the game there was far less confrontation between the players than is seen in other sports such as basketball and football.

Black called it a “new aspect of team effort (in rugby).”

“One player can’t change the game it takes the team to commit,” Hytham Elsherif, a senior Kinesiology major said.

Unlike football, open runs and deep passes are a rare occurrence, most of the scoring comes from small passes from player to player.

At the closing of the game Arroyave led the team in lining up to thank the fans for coming before joining their opponent for a traditional after party.