It is, according to former Italy international Walter Rista, a sport with respect for the rules written into its DNA.
So what could be better than rugby as a means of helping prisoners involved in a groundbreaking Italian rehabilitation program prepare for their return to the outside world?
“The very fact that they are in prison means they have lost a sense of the rules, somewhere along the way,” said Rista, the founding father of La Drola, an inmate team that performs a “jailbird Haka” before matches in the fifth tier of Italian rugby.
“Rugby helps to channel the aggression that we all have inside us,” the 70-year-old Rista added, as he explained why the prison system teamed up with the national rugby federation to create a club whose name means “strange” in the local Piemontese dialect.
“In prison, everyone only thinks of themselves,” Rista said. “Here, on the pitch, everyone thinks about others, about support, which is the essence of sport and of life.”
Most of the players had never laid hands on an oval ball before finding themselves locked up, but according to Rista, something about incarceration produces quick learners.
Normally with a new group of players a full season is required “to form something resembling a team,” he said.
“Here, after two months they are acting, mentally at least, like a real team,” he added.
Gheorghita, a hulking, tattooed 35-year-old from Romania, was one of the uninitiated.
“I’d heard of it, but didn’t understand a thing about it,” he said. “I thought: ‘Who are these idiots brawling with each other?’”
“Soon it gets under your skin and you understand that it is a great sport, and despite the blows, it is very clean and honest. Rugby has given me something I hadn’t found in prison — a way of letting off steam without any consequences,” he said.
Squad members are selected on the basis of their physical and psychological potential from prisons all over Italy. They share a common living space and 12 cells at the Lorusso and Cutugno detention center, located just 1km from Juventus Stadium.
Their unique status means they required a special exemption from the league they play in to be allowed to play every fixture at home, under the gaze of guards in the watchtower and surrounded by barbed wire.
Any advantage is offset by the league imposing an eight-point penalty on La Drola at the start of every season because the club does not comply with a requirement to run a youth team.
There are no post-match beers, but rugby tradition is observed with the opposition invited for pizza and mineral water.
Despite the points penalty, La Drola finished the season in third place, thanks in part to the time the prisoners can spend building muscle in the gym, but also to an admirable team spirit and a handful of players with high skill levels.
Since the project was started, a total of 65 players have worn the La Drola jersey. Half of them have now left prison and about 15 are playing regularly on the outside.
“The litmus test for this project is what happens when they get out. If they have understood that they can live a life without crime, we will have done our job,” Rista said.
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