THE annual Missoula Maggot Fest in the mountains of Montana is a rugby fanatic’s paradise.
Games run simultaneously on seven fields flanked by the snow-capped Rocky Mountains.
Everywhere you look a game is being played somewhere. The skills span all levels. The local team and festival organisers, the Missoula Maggots, are a handy outfit and invite at least three or four quality teams to play each year to test their own rugby abilities and to give spectators a chance to see some quality rugby.
The touring Outback Queensland Barbarians and the Howler’s Fire from Canada provided that standard this year.
For many of the travelling American teams though, the tournament is all about social rugby, with shorter halves, unlimited interchange, and a chance to drink beer before, during and after matches if you're keen.
A bargain $10 buys you a bottomless beer cup that you can have refilled with Budweiser countless times over the two day event.
The rugby revellers consumed 90 kegs on Saturday alone, and another 200 at the four-hour B&S style party on Saturday night (binge drinking laws haven’t hit the US yet).
Men and women players in jerseys and boots drink beer on the sidelines and in the central beer garden side by side with people in viking costumes, men wearing dresses and others dressed as giant toucans.
Before one match the players from both teams interlock arms in a giant circle and then skip and dance while singing a rugby song. They laugh and shake hands and then 30 seconds later they are belting into each other at one-hundred-miles-an-hour.
Plumes of smoke rise from the sidelines where spectators with portable barbecues and eskies talk and cheer.
And then there are the dogs. Dogs roam everywhere. It is said there are more dogs in Montana than there are people and it looks like they all come to Maggot Fest. It is not uncommon to see dogs roaming fields in and around players as a match is played.
The Maggot Fest is the major annual fundraising event for the Missoula Maggots Rugby Club.
More than 200 teams apply to be to be involved each year but only 40 are chosen.
The main emphasis is on finding teams that are as committed to having as much fun off the field as on it. Every team plays two games on Saturday and one on Sunday.
Teams that fail to turn up on Sunday, no matter how late their previous night, are expelled from the tournament the following year. Very few fail to make their Sunday match - everyone wants a return ticket to Maggot Fest.
“In the whole USA this is the place to be,” says Mike Day, an engineer by trade who plays hooker for the Maggots. Mike’s sporting career is as colourful as the beads and sarong he wears between games to stay in party mode: he was originally a wrestler who competed at international level, then left that to become a bull rider. “After I got beat up I chose rugby as my retirement sport,” the 30 year old said.
Mike says that rugby fellowship is what the Maggot Fest is all about. “It doesn’t matter if you kick our ass or we kick your ass, we get together when it’s all over and have a beer and that’s all that matters.”
You don’t even need a team to play at maggot fest. Anyone can turn up and be slotted into a game somewhere. A trophy is awarded for the person who plays the most games during the tournament. Last year one player appeared in no less than 12 games over the two days to claim the trophy.
The Maggots compete at a high standard but are limited by the fact that most players in the US do not take up rugby until they leave high school and go to college at 18 years old. Therefore most players in the US do not benefit from the same experience as players from rugby nations who have grown up playing the sport as a child.
Maggots coach Eddie Murphy, a New Zealander who teaches at Canterbury Boys High School in Christchurch and is here for just the three month rugby and snow-skiing season, says his players lack nothing in physicality or character but by virtue of their lack of experience they do not have the same control and structured play of Australian or Kiwi teams.
Mike Day said the maggots were continually seeking to improve their level of rugby and the move to invite Eddie Murphy over this year had brought a major leap forward.
“You know what’s great,” Mike says. “Having a coach from New Zealand, the difference between our rugby last year and this year is amazing.
“He is giving us the tools we need to be more competitive.”
By the time the Maggot Fest is over it seems that players from all 40 teams have found time to have a beer with each other at least once or twice. Jerseys are swapped, phone numbers and email addresses are exchanged and everyone piles into buses, vans and cars for the 5, 10 or 15 hour drive back home to all corners of the US. The Barbarians raise a beer and swear they’ll be back.
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