Rugby Roughs It Up

Not any more. The emergence of Balaraman Gopinath from an obscure technical institute for orphans in Chennai to the senior national squad which played the World Cup qualifiers in Mumbai last week is the latest bit of evidence that rugby is covering new constituencies. This, says India’s coach, the New Zealander Willie Hetaraka, is rugby’s bigger story: its penetration into India’s untapped interiors and the game’s expanding base beyond its Mumbai and Kolkata patrons.

Gopinath (20), who happily swapped the drudgery of an air-conditioner mechanic’s job for an air-borne stint as a jumper in the lineouts, is the antithesis of the archetypal rugby player. His Kamal Hassan-inspired drawl and penchant for street-side cockfights are light years from the clipped accents of the clubhouse bar. Yet he is the future, a point underlined by the fact that the current Indian team has no representation from the CCFC.

Chennai’s Anjuman Orphanage Institute, where Gopinath found himself grappling in his first messy maul with coach Faiyaz Akbar, is churning out tougher rookies than any other training ground. That too, on turf that resembles a pebble-strewn construction site.

The Anjuman boys, known to specialise in hard-nosed tackles, aided the city’s graduate-side Chennai Cheetahs to a maiden all-India title last year. Star fly-half Emil Vartazarian spends his hours off duty tending to these greenhorns, converting their raw strength, enthusiasm and instinct into bona fide rugby skills.

It’s certainly a development that has impressed India Captain Nasser Hussain. A Bombay Gym regular himself, with a CV that includes a stint at Newcastle, he says he’s thrilled that the national team’s assorted bunch from far-flung areas are coming good at the highest level. Scouting the countryside for rugged talent was Hetaraka’s idea. Since first arriving here a couple of years ago, his talent hunt has spanned an Army base in Ahmednagar to villages in Haryana where his roadshows exposed him to the seven-footers who could demolish the myth of Indian rugby players being small in size.

‘‘They are as big as anyone’’, hetaraka says, ‘‘and I’ve seen the best in the world during my tenure as the Maori coach.’’ Rural north India, he adds, been singled out as a potential breeding ground for India’s forward line (where the really big guys play).

‘‘It’s people from small islands like Fiji and Papua New Guinea who are doing really well. And all the top members of the All-Blacks, including Carlos Spencer come from the countryside, so we have precedent.’’

Hetaraka, who helped sell raffle tickets to raise a small-town team in New Zealand, is a firm believer in the power of the village. ‘‘I was born in a village and since our folk don’t have the distractions which a city offers, we love to run and are very good at it; that’s the key to success in sport,’’ he says.

There was ready evidence of the success of this alternative growth track last year, when a huge crowd witnessed a match held at a village outside Benaras. Two under-19 games against a visiting team from Lahore also got an overwhelming reception in rural Haryana where locals came to cheer some of their home-boys who had made it to the Indian squad.

Beyond the UK-imported bulk and the loosely borrowed idea of beer barrels, there is a small rugby revolution brewing in India.