Party Animals

Until a few years ago, the San Fernando Valley rugby club was known for having a better time off the field than on it.

Mounting losses failed to dampen spirits as long as there were cheers and beers waiting for players after the game.

“San Fernando had a reputation: they might not win the game, but they’ll win the party,” team member Chris Conrad said.

Now they win both.

Adopting a more serious approach, the Valley club began a winning tradition in 1994 that has resulted in a four-year unbeaten streak in league play and national recognition.

The team, which opens the season Dec. 6 in the Las Vegas tournament, has set its sights on winning the 1998 Division II national championship.

“We have the capability and the skill,” player-coach Dean Butter said. “We’ve come close in the past. There’s no reason we shouldn’t win the whole shebang this year.”

Javier Prelooker, the team’s other player-coach, knows how far the Valley club has come. He joined in 1991 when it was “more a social club than anything.”

“We played a horrible game for a couple of years,” said Prelooker, an Argentine who is one of the team’s best backs. “In ‘93-94, we started changing things. We started getting more serious players.”

Wearing no padding, rugby players sacrifice their bodies for the love of the game. They’ve been doing it for the Valley club since its inception in 1963 at San Fernando Valley State College--now Cal State Northridge, where the team still plays its home games.

“To me, it’s like going to war with my teammates,” said Prelooker, 29, an advertising executive from Calabasas. “You’re not playing tennis or volleyball--with all respect to those sports, but those are not physical games.

“Every time you want to move the ball [in rugby], there are 15 guys waiting to kick your butt. . . . Rugby is a hooligan game played by gentlemen.”

The “gentlemen” on the Valley club have become a proficient unit in the last four years, winning three Southern California championships and reaching the national final in 1995 before losing to the University of Michigan men’s club.

The Valley club plans to move to Division I competition for the 1998-99 season.

For a sport unfamiliar to most Americans, rugby has gained a surprisingly strong foothold, with approximately 1,600 clubs in the U.S.

Rugby, a cross between soccer and American football, is played in more than 120 countries and is the second-most popular team sport in the world behind soccer.

There are more than 11 million expatriate rugby enthusiasts in the U.S., a statistic reflected in the international flavor of the Valley club, which has players from Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, France, New Zealand, Tonga and Wales, as well as the U.S.

“When you get all these cultures together, it becomes one big emotional melting pot on the field,” Butter said. “I’ve never seen a group of guys who want to win so bad.”

Butter, a former New Zealand police officer whose dream growing up was to play for his country’s beloved All Blacks national rugby team, says U.S. athletes unfamiliar with the sport tend to embrace its combination of camaraderie and fierce competitiveness.

“We get a lot of Americans who haven’t really experienced the game before,” said Butter, a personal trainer who lives in Sherman Oaks. “The more they play, the more they realize it’s more than just a game. There’s nothing like it.

“You come off beaten up, especially if you’re one of the forwards in the pack, but always with a feeling of accomplishment. . . . It creates such a spirit among the team, like a family. If you don’t play that way, you won’t win. It’s very emotional.”

The euphoric feeling he gets from playing rugby has kept Butter, 31, coming back for more despite several concussions and broken ribs, nose and kneecap.

The game is closer to its American offspring, football, than soccer but there is no forward pass. Teams, which are 15 players a side, progress the oval ball by kicking or carrying it. Only lateral passing is allowed.

Players are divided into forwards, or linemen, and backs. A tackled player must release the ball, resulting in a scrum where the forwards, lined up and facing each other in a compact formation, try to kick the ball between them back to their teammates. Possession can change on any play.

“It kind of looks like chaos out there, but there is a lot of strategy involved,” Conrad said.

Rugby is played on a field measuring 100 meters in length and from 50 to 75 meters wide. A score in the end zone is called a try and worth five points. An extra-point kick is two points, and a penalty kick and drop kick are each three points.

Conrad, 30, who played football at Thousand Oaks High, said rugby is less violent than football but requires better conditioning because there is more running involved. Each team is allowed four substitutions, which are usually saved to replace injured players.

“It’s a continuous flow but you’re not hitting someone every single play, like in football,” he said. “I injured myself much more in football. In rugby, you get black eyes and bumps and bruises. Occasionally you’ll get a fairly serious injury. But because you’re running more, big hits aren’t as [common] as in football.”

After games, Valley club players retreat to someone’s house or to a restaurant for a meal, drinks and to pass out player-of-the-game awards.

Unlike in the past, though, they don’t stay too long.

“We’ve given up a little bit of the party,” Conrad said, “but it’s still a good time.”

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Line of Scrummage

San Fernando Valley rugby club’s 1997-98 schedule

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Date Opponent/Site Dec. 6-7 at Las Vegas tournament Dec. 13 at Del Mar Dec. 20 Eagle Rock Jan. 10 at Santa Monica Jan. 17 *Kern County Jan. 24 *at Occidental College Feb. 1 *Pasadena Feb. 7 *at Santa Barbara Feb. 21 *at San Luis Obispo Mar. 1 *at Kern County Mar. 7 *Occidental College Mar. 15 *at Pasadena Mar. 21 *Santa Barbara Mar. 28 at Belmont Shores Apr. 18 *San Luis Obispo

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Home games at Cal State Northridge

*League games