By Brian Lennon, Loudoun Times-Mirror, 4/19/00

After hitting, tackling and sometimes even kicking each other for 80 minutes, in the end, they are all friends. Welcome to the world of rugby.

The Western Suburbs Rugby Football Club, with players ranging in ages from 19-43, is more than an athletic team. This group of computer programmers, construction workers, salesmen, lawyers, government employees and students, at times resembles more of a fraternity.

For Sterling resident Mike Clark, a network engineer, he came to the game, which is a combination of soccer and football but without the pads, through his roommate while serving in the Air Force.

"I went out and first game I played, loved it," Clark said. "And been playing ever since."

Clark, who said he has played rugby "off and on for 13 years," eventually found the WSRFC through its Web site. It was the "social" aspect of the club that was most appealing.

"I met some good people and that's why I stayed," he said.

The fall season is when the WSRFC competes toward a national championship, but it was last Thursday night at Claude Moore Park in Sterling that the club took on the Lyneham Lions, a Royal Air Force rugby football club from the United Kingdom.

The Lions had traveled across the Atlantic to compete in exhibitions during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Looking for some extra matches while in the area, the Lions also happened across the WSRFC Web site.

"We try to tour once a year," explained Lions president Jamie Jamieson, whose club plays eight months out of the year.

Losing their first game of the tour, the Lions defeated the Marines rugby team from Quantico, 27-0.

The celebration, as Jamieson explains, extended in to the wee hours of the next day.

'There was lots of singing, drinking," Jamieson said.

The singing and drinking Jamison is referring to is also known as "choir practice," which takes place at a local tavern, either after a practice or to plan the upcoming weeks strategy.

The songs, said Buzz McClain, who refereed the night's match, "are the funniest things I've heard in my life."

Said McClain: "You go to work with a black eye or on crutches, but it's the social aspect."

With roughly 35,000 players in the United States, the game's popularity is strong, particularly around D.C., where there are 69 clubs in the Potomac Rugby Union.

And the rewards are not likely found on the playing field. This night the WSRFC fails to score against the Lions, but that will be hard to tell later at choir practice.