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First, let's call this movie what it is:
1. It's a feel-good movie with a message.
2. The acting is just okay, dialog slightly better, production value pretty good.
3. Rugby scenes...just barely passable.
But here's the trick: this isn't something Hollywood contrived, and it isn't trying to be a ferociously accurate portrayal of the sport. It is instead a pretty good representation of mostly real people, in real circumstances, and a real storyline. Sure, they could have done a better job actually rep'ing the sport, but my vote: it does a pretty good job at what it sets out to do.
(And fwiw, I can't think of many football, baseball, hockey or soccer movies that are true to the sport either. C'mon...Bull Durham?)
I'm not a rugby player (I was a wrestler) but I graduated from Highland, attended '86-'90, and occasionally trained with the Rugby guys. My brother-in-law David, however, was one of the original founding members of the Highland Rugby Club in 1976. (His younger brother, Billy, played the next year, as I recall. If you're interested, there's a Highland Rugby site at highlandrugby.net that addresses the history of the team.)
By the time I was there the club had been in existence for about a decade, and had long since built a reputation for excellence. It's a fact that they focused on "broad" training topics: devotion, honor, discipline, effort, not tactics. I thought the rugby guys I knew were a little 'off' in the head, but I think I might have just been a little jealous. They were hard-core dedicated to the belief system that Gelwix promoted.
With regard to the "cultural mixing" issues that have been brought up, it might be interesting to note that while I was there in the 80's, one of the larger schools in the city was shut down - South High School - and its students distributed among the other 3 primary SLC schools. To be honest, Highland pre-80's was pretty whitebread...I've got a picture of the team from (I think) 1977 that shows an *all* white club. South High, on the other hand, was a much more racially integrated school before it closed: I had a pair of friends from South who joined the team, one Tongan, one Samoan, and as I recall there were a bunch of Island-nation players that joined up '88-'90. I don't think anyone questioned the credibility of the team in adopting Maori (or other cultural) traditions: if there was one thing that was obvious about these guys, it's that they walked the walk.
And as to the strength of the team when compared to the best highschool-age teams in the world: yeah, it's true that US-Rugby, on average when taken as a whole, does not represent particularly well against the best elsewhere. There are exceptions, but hey - it's a simple fact that Rugby doesn't have the prominence or exposure needed to develop the multiple traditions of excellence in the US that arise in other countries.
With that said, judge Highland on its merits:
- the *only* team to qualify for the USA Rugby National Championships every year of that organizations' 25-yr history.
- a win record of 392 wins, 9 losses. Read that again...winningest coach in any US sport in history.
- regular international tours.
- some compelling wins against some legitimate international teams.
Are they the world best? Maybe some years, probably not most...but they're pretty good on a consistent basis. And it's disrespectful to the game to blow them off, when Highland Rugby may be the best ambassador to the sport in the US.


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