December 16, 1999
Jeremy Cuevas, one of three Bonac champions in Saturday’s Frank (Sprig) Gardner tournament, was the 12-team tourney’s most outstanding wrestler, largely because of the fact that he defeated a North Carolina runner-up, James Brimmer, 7-5 in overtime to win the 119-pound class.
. . . Besides Cuevas, East Hampton’s other champions were Louis Russo in the 125-pound division and Rick Osterberg at 135 pounds.
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When Craig Brierley, a utility back with the Montauk Rugby Club, got a phone message recently from his wife’s uncle, who was extending an invitation to attend the World Rugby Cup finals in Cardiff, Wales, he shook his head.
“For me, for any rugby player, it was like being invited to the Super Bowl,” he said on his return here, adding that to his delight, his wife, Christina, insisted he go. The call came in on Tuesday. Wednesday evening he was on the plane.
. . . While Wales lost in the World Cup quarterfinals to Australia, Brierley saw two premier-level Welsh teams, Llanelli and Pontypridd, play on the eve of the World Cup final in a stadium that seated 15,000. “I wanted nothing more than to put my boots on and play. That’s the feeling you get, being around everybody who loves the game so much.”
“One thing about rugby,” Frank Bistrian, Montauk’s number-eight, said, “is that no matter where you go in the world, if you stay with rugby people they’ll take care of you. If a player comes here from Argentina, say, we’ll do the same thing. There’s a worldwide rugby community.”
. . . “Once you become part of the game it becomes part of you,” Brierley continued. “It’s so addicting. I don’t want to stop, though my wife has a different view. . . . The injuries aren’t bad. Football is much worse because they’re wearing armor. Rugby helped Robbie Balnis become a much better football player, his father said, and look what the sport has done for him: He’s not out of college yet and he’s been all over the world, playing in the South Sea Islands, Australia, South America. . . .”
“If you play football as a kid, you may play in high school. Some will go on to play in college. A very few go on to the pros. But with rugby you can play as long as you can and go anywhere in the world and play and be accepted.”
. . . Asked to compare the level of rugby he saw in Wales and the level in America, Brierley said, “It’s so fluid over there. Remember though, they’ve been playing since they were kids.”
Outside London the day before he left he saw “fields full of kids teams playing, third and fourth graders. They’d tackle and go over the ball to form a ruck and keep the defense from getting it. They were playing well — doing what we’re being taught. It was amazing to see it. Here, my brother Steve and John Ryan and Tee Bushman teach the kids some of the fundamentals and they play touch. But I think they should begin playing the game.”
