1983 Mizzou Rugby

The club went into the fall of 1983 coached by Ian Hermann, who had come to Missouri in 1981 from South Africa, where he had played for the South African national team in international competition at nineteen. He had found the club by accident. “I came and watched a rugby match and was giving advice from the sidelines,” Hermann told The Maneater. “Then they asked me to become the coach.” Warren Stemme, who served as both club president and team captain that year, credited him with discipline, conditioning and the teaching of skills. The scrum was light for the company it was keeping, and the side leaned instead on quickness and on a backfield bolstered by speed and experience.

The season opened at the CMSU Annual Rugby Tournament in Warrensburg, where Missouri finished third out of eight teams, beating Central Missouri State and Northeast Missouri State before losing to a well-rested Missouri–Rolla side in the closing minutes of its third match of the day. A tired squad dropped a close one to Northeast Missouri in rain and mud the next day. The home opener brought a loss to the experienced St. Louis Ramblers, and a return trip to Rolla ended 9–6 to the Miners in a match that stayed scoreless until the second half. “The defeat was due to the team’s mistakes,” Hermann said. “We should have won the game.” That left the Tigers at 2–4.

The last weekend of October was the hardest of the year. On the Saturday, Missouri lost 12–3 to a Missouri Alumni side made up of former Tigers still turning out for city clubs, some of them with ten years of rugby behind them; Hermann put the result down to sheer experience. On the Sunday came a 13–12 defeat to Northeast Missouri State that he called heartbreaking. The Bulls took a quick 7–0 lead; Greg Wolff’s field goal off a NEMO penalty narrowed it to 7–3; then forward Mike McManus booted a loose ball at the 30-meter line, gathered it at the five and carried it in, and Wolff’s conversion made it 12–7. NEMO scored a converted try with half a minute left, following a penalty the Tigers disputed. “We dropped two kicks deep in our end and that cost us at the end,” scrum half Donny Grace said. Hermann was blunter about the officiating, and said the club would be leaving the Heart of America Rugby Union the following year.

Then the fall turned. Missouri beat Springfield 19–10 behind a 13–0 halftime lead: Steve Kaufmann opened the scoring off a pass from John Holdmeyer, and McManus scored twice, the first of them after Tom Miller’s hit jarred the ball loose. Wolff added a conversion and a penalty kick. “We played a very consistent game,” Stemme said. “Both the offense and defense played equally well. Conditioning again played a big part in the win.” Hermann noted that the opposition had outweighed his team by an average of thirty pounds a man. A week later the Tigers outhustled the St. Louis Royals 11–8 at Reactor Field, with Grace credited with a try, to reach 5–6 with two home games left. No record of those last two fixtures — St. Louis University and Southeast Missouri, on the weekend of November 12 — has reached us.

In the spring the club went to the Langenberg Cup Tournament in Cape Girardeau and reached the final, where Missouri–Rolla beat them 11–7 in a close one. The Maneater’s picture page from the same week also records a 24–0 shutout of the Springfield City-Side club, in which Stemme scored two four-point tries. A rematch with Rolla was set for Reactor Field on March 10.