To South African Adrian Brink, playing rugby is a “way of life,” but he never thought that his love for the sport could be sustained when he came to Taiwan, where rugby is not anywhere near as popular as in his home country. He was wrong.
“I moved in with a guy who played in the Baboons,” Brink said. “I arrived on Wednesday and I started rugby practice the very next day.”
An outdoor activity instructor at a private school in Taipei, Brink is also captain of the Taipei Baboons.
“It’s like a home away from home … There is something about home that you can actually do here,” he said.
The history of the city’s largest rugby club — mostly comprising foreigners working in Taiwan — is something of a mystery. Australian Max Murphy, a restaurant manager, joined the Baboons in 2001. He said all he knew was that the team was started “by a bunch of French who played rugby.”
Murphy didn’t have a difficult time locating the club either.
“It doesn’t matter where you are … once you arrive in a city, you go to a bar and ask ‘Where’s the rugby team?’ and there you go. Rugby players are always together,” he said.
INTERACTION
The team practices every Thursday at Taipei’s Minchuan Park and Saturday at the Bailin Bridge Rugby Fields (台北市百齡橋運動公園橄欖球場). In these two venues, they get the opportunity to meet with many other local players, such as those from the Giants Rugby Football Club (巨人橄欖球俱樂部) and university rugby teams. From time to time, the Baboons get to have one or two practice matches with them.
“The rugby scene in Taiwan is actually not that small, it’s just that not too many people know about it,” Brink said.
The team’s amicable interaction with local players came with time. The Baboons, Brink said, used to have a very bad reputation — either they would get into fights with local players or scream at the referees. It took the team about a year to reshape their image and build relationships with local teams.
“We started taking those players [that misbehaved] off the field,” Brink said.
“Not that we now play soft, but we want to play matches against the local teams every week. You have to show good sportsmanship,” Brink said, adding that the team now has a committee that drafts regulations for on-field behavior.
“It’s a rugby team. We are not a bunch of sissies. If you’ve got a really bad attitude, guys will tell you out front and sort you out,” he said.
Brink says the game puzzles some of his Taiwanese friends.
“A friend asked me, ‘Why did you guys run all over the field and tackle each other just to get the ball?’” Brink said.
And when Murphy tells his local friends that he plays rugby, the first response he gets is most likely to be about the violence of the sport.
Brink said the lack of popularity for rugby in Taiwan is mostly because people don’t know the rules, and the Baboons hope to promote the sport by holding regular games with Taiwanese teams.
Both Brink and Murphy cited camaraderie as the main motivation to keep playing despite the many injuries they have accumulated over the years.
“There’s a saying that ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ I think that applies to rugby,” Murphy said.
To Brink, playing rugby is a perfect way to get rid of frustration and let off steam.
“What better way to do that than to tackle some people?” Brink said.
Occasionally, the team also finds members like Swede Anders Haraldsson, who had never played rugby before he joined the Baboons.
Haraldsson, a school manager, watched the 1995 Rugby World Cup on TV and thought it looked like fun. He had played with a soccer team for a short time after moving to Taiwan. A friend who happened to live across the street from the rugby pitch told him he should try joining the Baboons.
NO FEAR
Haraldsson said that while it took a while to learn the skills of game, the violence didn’t bother him.
“In Sweden, we played ice hockey as kids, where you could get a lot more serious injuries than you do in rugby,” he said.
Haraldsson broke his collarbone in a rugby game once, but that did not stop him from playing.
“[Rugby] is for young and tough men. There is a certain amount of pain involved, but there is always a learning curve,” he said. “After the game, you just drink beer and forget all about the pain.”
The Taipei Baboons will host a game on Saturday at the Bailin Bridge Rugby Fields that pits South African players from across Taiwan against those from the rest of the world. The main game kicks off at 3:30pm, but as a curtain-raiser, the Baboons will play against the Giants at 2pm.
For more information, visit www.taipeirugby.com.
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