In the small Charlotte suburb of Matthews, NC, they take their rugby and their football very seriously. 

The middle school rugby club here, the Matthews Mustangs, has won back-to-back state titles and has more all-stars on the state side than the next two clubs combined. Matthews is also home to a couple of high schools and several middle schools that regularly contend for state championships with a robust Pop Warner youth football community that feeds these schools. 

Rugby and football in this small town have now come together thanks to coaches sharing best practices at the local Athletic Association, MARA. In fact, the way it came about is about as grassroots as it gets.  At a monthly Sunday night board meeting in June, the football commissioner and the rugby commissioner got to talking about the Seattle Seahawks video narrated by Pete Carroll explaining how his team has adopted rugby style tackling and practices tackling out of helmets and pads. At one point in the conversation, the football commissioner asked the obvious question, “Why don’t we do that here?”

It was decided then and there that MARA would host a rugby tackling clinic for youth football players over the Summer.  The board only hoped to cover cost and needed 6-8 players to make it viable.  Word spread like wildfire and with very little promotion and only a few weeks from inception to the clinic date – more than 30 players signed up and 6 area football coaches asked if they could attend as well to shadow the rugby coaches to learn techniques and get ideas for drills they could incorporate in their own practices. 

By all accounts, the clinic was a smashing success. The players, ranging from 2nd- to 8th-graders, started from the knee and progressed through controlled drills and games all the way through open field tackling at speed.  In the span of three short hours, many players went from no real knowledge about proper tackling to encouraging each other to go “cheek-to-cheek,” “eyes through the thighs,” “wrap, squeeze, drive, and drop,” and in general looking like a group of hard tackling ruggers. 

One of the moms in attendance, Meg Enos, explained why this clinic appealed to her. 

“These rugby players are out there tackling and running into each other just as much as football players…but they don’t wear helmets or pads. Then you find out they don’t get concussions as often as football players do. The only way that is possible is if they are tackling in a better and safer way.  As a mom, I want my son to have fun and he really wants to play football, he loves it.  But if there are ways I can reduce the risk, I am going to take advantage of them. This clinic was great.  He loved it, learned some things and I have a little more peace of mind.”

The clinic was conducted by three level 200 coaches who also coach the Mustangs; Erik Saxon, Danny Harlow and Camille Queen.  Saxon, who is also the director of the Charlotte Junior Rugby Association (CJRA) says the benefit was not only for football.

“All these kids not only learned better tackling, they also learned about rugby.  They had an absolute blast and were asking questions about how rugby works.   My feeling is that when their football season wraps up in November, we’ll be seeing a lot of these faces again coming out for rugby.  If that isn’t a win for everyone, I don’t know what is.”

MARA plans to expand on the tackling clinic next year and offering it on a contract basis to the other ten or so athletic associations in the greater Charlotte area.

- Erik Saxon