My experience of Spanish rugby began with the destruction of a truth I’d previously considered incontestable: that Astroturf was only for hockey and five-a-side football. It was with this worrying news that I took to the plastic in 30 degree heat with the Theta Cisneros, a team which takes its name from a play on words involving a letter of the Greek alphabet and the Spanish word for breast.
Rugby has a long and proud heritage amongst those who are part of its community in Spain, and the Spanish Federation currently has more registered senior male players than Scotland. The national side reached the 1999 World Cup group stages, while Oriol Ripol, who won the Premiership with Sale Sharks in 2006, is probably its best known name. My club, C.R. Cisneros, was based at one of the colleges of the Universidad Complutense. Its First team was recently promoted to Spain’s top league, the División de Honor A. The Theta, however, battled several rungs further down in Madrid Regional Two. Having always had a passion for rugby inverse to my ability and physique, I was looking for a recreational and social experience. Thankfully, this was much in tune with the rest of the Theta, a team which, in my opinion, exemplifies all that is good about rugby.
The team’s home ground, Paraninfo, is comfortably the worst pitch I’ve ever played on with the exception of its alternative home ground, Cantarranas. Both were rock hard, becoming mudbaths after rain. I soon learnt that the exfoliation sessions on artificial pitches were the lesser of two evils. The Theta was led by the indefatigable captain Cuartero, who composed one match report in the style of a Spanish ballad, and another as the diary of a seaman aboard a naval ship. In both cases, the style was carried off superbly. Arguably though, the team’s spiritual leader was talismanic playercoach Gonzalo ‘Zoydberg’ Benito, a swashbuckling and hugely adept number eight.
Indeed, it was clear that Zoy had honed his skills during many a Theta season spent at the base of a fast-retreating scrum. Madrid Regional Two, as it turned out, was a bit of a graveyard for running rugby, full of very big, very slow men. The Theta is largely made up of students and I think we gave away 10 to 15 kilos per player against most teams. Trailing by thirty points at halftime, we would invariably mount a plucky comeback against an exhausted opposition, in a race against time to overturn the deficit.
Sometimes we scraped to victory, sometimes we were beaten by the clock, but there was rarely dull moment, and a battle against relegation became a charge up the table to a respectable fifth placed finish. However, the Theta is not really about the quality of rugby but rather the enjoyment of the sport and everything it offers. It is a social union as much as a sporting one, and Cisneros as a club puts the values of rugby at the forefront of everything it does, doing tremendous work in introducing young men and women to the benefits of rugby, both on and off the pitch.
Such is the enthusiasm of those already involved in the sport it’s not unrealistic to expect Spain to compete in a good few World Cups in the next 20 years. As I see it, there are two main issues for the Spanish federation to tackle. The first is that a lot of players only take up rugby at university, meaning that they miss out on years of skills training and game understanding. Most tier three and low tier two countries produce decent athletes but lack the intuition of the world’s best players, the result of not growing up around the game.
The second problem for Spain is simply a lack of good facilities. The Complutense’s pitches are used for training and matches every week, not only by the college sides, but also the faculty sides, as well as the Cisneros and its entire academy. For those taking up the game, rugby is just not as fun on such surfaces. Grass is a precious commodity and difficult to manage given the climate, while synthetic pitches require investment.
However, until such investment arrives, I’m sure that rugby in Spain will continue to thrive in spite of the obstacles it faces. As for the Theta, I hope they one day make it to Regional One.
