LJ rugby: Renner on a good run

Freshman Renner Smith,

who is playing the "9".

(Photo by Ed Piper)

By Ed Piper

"My job (as the number 9) is to take the ball (from the scrum) and pass it," says Renner Smith, a ninth-grader at LJHS playing his first season of rugby, less than a year out of Muirlands Middle School.

"Before the game," Smith said Mon., Jan. 23, in an interview on campus, "I close my eyes and try to imagine what is going to happen in the game." This visualization seems to be working, because the 5'7", 135-pound back is doing things the Viking coaches like, and that's why they're keeping him in the nine slot.

Renner is planning to play freshman baseball in the Spring, which isn't too far away.

To work on getting better, working in harmony behind the front three lines (a 3-2-3 formation), with the other seven tailing off to the side and back--everyone has to stay behind the ball-carrier on offense--the team "had a practice. We paid attention to what we weren't doing well. We watched film. We worked a lot on defense," the freshman revealed.

The interesting thing about rugby is that there are no platoons like football. All 15 players in the lineup play both offense and defense. There is a flow in which the ball can quickly change hands. Play is not stopped by the referee into distinct times of offense or defense, like football.

However, one similarity between the two sports is that players can make defensive plays to take the ball away from the other team, and advance the ball. The team goes immediately into offensive mode.

When a spectator is new to rugby, it looks kind of like a scrum--all eight on both teams arm-in-arm, pushing against each other--is what happens every time a tackle is made.

But that isn't true. A scrum is only organized by the referee when the ball-carrier is tackled and doesn't immediately release the ball. If he holds on to it, this infraction leads to the scrum being called to restart play.

This is where Renner Smith comes in: he, at the ninth position, and his fellow backs (faster, usually smaller players than the big boys up front) wait for the ball to be rolled out (kicked along the way) the back. He takes it and begins passing it along to 10, 11, 12, etc. in the moving formation.