Rugby Players are Bloody Mad

Too funny:

Russians playing a game of amateur rugby were arrested by police who mistook the match for a mass brawl, local media reported Monday.

"We got a call to our control room saying there was a fight involving a lot of people on some waste ground just outside town," RIA news agency quoted a police official in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don as saying.

The players and supporters -- nearly 100 people in total -- were taken to the local police station. They were released without charge when officers realized they had been playing rugby, the news agency reported.

So typical. Why? Because rugby players are bloody mad, that’s why. (Read on only if you’re not the squeamish or easily offended sort.)

Rugby players are not only mental cases (which I mean in the best possible way) on the field, putting American footballers to absolute shame, cosseted in their 200 pounds of protective gear, but are (at least in Scotland) the purveyors of the most foul and guffaw-inducing drinking game of which I have ever heard, known as freckles. Freckles is played by first procuring a pair of ladies’ nylons, and then having one of the mates take a giant dump in them. The hose are then forcefully slapped down on the table, and whoever is covered in the fewest speckles of dung (ergo, “freckles”) has to buy the next round. I shit you not. (No pun intended.)

Of course, you’ve probably got to be a bit mad to engage in this bone-crusher of a game. But how can one not celebrate such madness? It’s like soccer, American football, boxing, and cage matches all rolled into one. Now that’s a sport to be reckoned with.

Here are a few snaps from a recent Scotland match to give any rugby-virgins an idea of why the Russian authorities thought they had a brawl on their hands.