Return to Pointer View home page September 24,  2004

Revamped Army rugby team looks to return

Story and photos by Spc. Eric S. Bartelt 
Features Editor

New offensive pattern, new jerseys, new head coach, but same old results as Army men’s rugby A- and B-sides trampled New Hampshire in their 2004 New England Rugby Football Union openers, 63-0 and 83-0, respectively, at Daly Field Saturday.

Beginning their 43rd season and coming off a 15-1-1 record, the Army ruggers are trying to jettison the bitter taste left after losing in the sweet 16 last spring to Navy.

Armed with a new offensive pattern, coach Richard Pohlidal, who replaced Maj. Walt Kennedy, wants to take Army rugby to the same National Championship heights that Air Force achieved in 2003 when he was an assistant coach there under Rob Holder, a USMA 1989 graduate.

“What this offensive pattern does is very simple, it plays off the fitness, fundamentals and solid-decision making skills of the team we have here,” Pohlidal said. “The basic offensive pattern is more of a west coast dry-weather pattern and in rugby terms it’s much like the southern hemisphere pattern used in Australia and South Africa where it’s much drier.

“It uses the width of the field, it’s a fitness, sprint game that gets all 15 men involved as opposed to the England, Scotland, wet- weather game which is a 10-man rugby game where the fly half controls the forwards and is a very forward dominated game,” Pohlidal added. “We play forward and back domination, and mix it all into one big package. Defensively, we’re solid. We’re sustaining the existing defensive pattern and looking to build on it, specifically, when we poach the ball. We will work on quick transistions by employing our decision-making skills.”

Pohlidal, who returned to the academy during the 2003-04 season, has been implementing small parts of the new pattern since his arrival and now the 68-man team will take the pattern full time to the rugby pitch.

The main idea behind the change is that Army has dominated the east coast with a brash brand of rugby that it’s accustomed to in its wet weather region, but it’s that style of rugby that hasn’t been successful at the Final Four level.

“We’re trying to prepare ourselves for a higher level, the higher level of game that exists out west,” Pohlidal said. “We can do the same thing here, it just takes focus on the fundamental skills and I think we can play this game in wet or dry weather.

“It just takes more concentration on those New England rainy days. We can also match up and play some “10-man” east coast ball if we need too. Having options is a lways a good thing,” Pohlidal explained.

The nature of the beast on the east coast is teams play a wet weather brand that involves more engaging and driving teams into the ground, and although that is successful against New England competition it makes it harder to keep up with the more fluid, open style played out west during tournament time.

Thirteen players on the Army team, including All-American seniors prop Tyler Stegeman and flanker Cecil Wolberton, have been practicing this style since the summer when Pohlidal coached the combined services all-academy rugby team in Colorado.

The players have been receptive to the new pattern and believe they can take their games to the next level, while maintaining a winning tradition that has included 10 Final Four appearances since 1989.

“Our new coach has definitely brought us a new dynamic system of playing which is far different from the way we’ve been playing,” said senior fly half Liam Marmion. “For the past four years we’ve had a heavier team and it would involve more punching, physically pushing the opponent around the field.

“In the northeast, that system was successful, but when it came to the national level that system didn’t work,” Marmion added. “The system we’re playing now lets everyone become a decision maker, is more dynamic and it opens up the field to use both our fitness and extra skills to our advantage.”

Pohlidal added a staff of 10 rugby-experienced officers, who are a part of Army’s legacy of principled, tenacious rugby leadership, to assist in coaching the team so he can concentrate on the team as a whole.

“They’re (officers) doing a great job of keeping the guys in line and keeping me in line a little bit as well,” Pohlidal said. “I’m always listening for their advice and what they have to say because it matters, they’ve led men into battle, many of them are combat veterans, and I don’t have those experiences.

“How you treat the team and the direction you give them sets the tone for how we operate on and off the pitch -- I’m really cognizant of that when I operate and I encourage recommendations from the staff,” Pohlidal said.

Pohlidal, a former Penn State rugby player, was on two national runner-up teams in 1994 and 1997 as the Nittany Lions lost to Cal-Berkley both times during the Golden Bears 12-year championship reign from 1990-2002 before Air Force knocked them off the mountain in 2003.

With his playing and coaching background, one of the biggest and most important changes Pohlidal has brought to the team is training all the players together instead of breaking up the experienced and inexperienced guys into A-, B-, C- or D-side groupings.

“We want to develop our bottom-end as well as our top-end simultaneously, I think developing our depth is key for our team,” Pohlidal said. “If we can develop our fitness, depth and fundamentals  as a team of 68 we can last two games on a weekend, which we have to play during the sweet 16 tournament and the Final Four.

“It’s tough for these guys, as former coach Lt. Col. (ret.) Mike Mahan says, ‘To play rugby is to play hurt’, so we need to develop a squad of 30 that can actually go out there and play two games on a weekend at the same level with no drop,” Pohlidal added.

Young players like sophomores Erick Wagge, Nate Peper, Chris Wallgren and Andy Lock are making their marks and are striving to make an impression on the team.

But it’s experienced players like Stegeman, Marmion and Wolberton that are going to continue Army’s success on the field.

“Our captain, Liam Marmion, was born and raised in Ireland and has played rugby all his life, he’s the most adaptive, the most experienced player on the team,” Pohlidal said. “He commands from his position, he leads the attack, leads the defense and by far is the most dynamic player that we have.”

Adaptive might be an understatement as Marmion had to adjust from being the big man in Ireland to the small guy in America as well as how the game is looked at on this side of the pond.

“People are larger over here, so I switched to a smaller guy position when I got here because I was a little larger over there,” Marmion said. “Another big difference is in Ireland, I played rugby since I was eight years old and at lunch time it was rugby, rugby, rugby whereas people learn to throw a football over here, while it’s all rugby over there.”

Although experience is key, Wolberton believes the new system and new way of coaching all the sides is going to benefit the team in the end.

“The tactics that coach Pohlidal has inserted in Army rugby will definitely help us against higher competition,” Wolberton said. “The lower sides, they’ve never been this organized and overall we have a lot of depth and a lot of the new guys are starting to understand rugby.

“The knowledge that coach Pohlidal and the coaching staff brings to Army rugby is allowing every player to be able to make their own decisions,” Wolberton added. “He wants players with strong character and he’s the kind of guy that does things right himself and wants us to do things right -- he preaches really hard to us on that.”

Rugby is a game that involves mental toughness, making instinctual adjustments on the fly and a will to play through pain, and at the U.S. Military Academy it’s important to embody those characteristics to compete at the same level of excellence as Cal-Berkley, Stanford and Air Force.

“After three years at Air Force and winning a national championship, all I wanted to do is come back here and that’s always been my goal,” said Pohlidal, who was an assistant here under Mahan from 1998 to 2000. “We already have our name out there, but we’re trying to regenerate interest in academy rugby from the iside out.

“I want the academy to know that we’re going to operate a class-act program, maintain our winning tradition and do it the right way,” Pohlidal added. “We’re going to set the bar for collegiate rugby.”