Saturday, July 4, 2009

The Key West Rugby Club's Friday night clash with counterparts from the United Kingdom was not its first call to arms (and legs) against a foreign foe. This time the Brits won 10-3. But seldom does camaraderie do as much to unite historic rivals as it does with the Commander's Cup match.

The competition has its roots in a 1969 match in Key West between the University of Miami rugby squad and visiting British sailors. Who won that match is a matter still debated over beers at Shanna Key Irish Pub and Grill on Flagler Avenue, where the cup resides.

The rivalry went dormant for a couple of decades after that first match, until a Key West rugby squad started taking shape under the leadership of Mike Spontak and Joel Dos Santos. The pair take the sport seriously.

Dos Santos hails from South Africa, but has called Key West home for about nine years. In that time, he's been transforming American military men, and a few civilians, into international rugby warriors.

The relatively new Key West Rugby Club's reach was international early on.

In fact, members of the club were selected to go Cuba several years ago to play a Fourth of July match with a Cuban team, recalls Spontak, who is both a coach and a player.

Many of the Key West players were active duty military personnel, as they are now. Most were from the Navy and Coast Guard, with some from the Army and Air Force.

That helped make the Cuba trip as much about national pride as friendly competition, Spontak said.

"But it got all Castro, as we called it," he said, and a Cuban government official apparently canceled the match after the Cuban coach declined to guarantee a Cuban win.

"It was still fun, though; we got to legally fly to Cuba," Spontak said.

Though the Cuba match never materialized, the local rugby squad turned its interest to another international rivalry that, in a sense, goes back to 1776. The Commander's Cup.

Until Friday, the Yanks had won two matches and the Brits had claimed one, Dos Santos said.

The Key West squad bragged that the news of the Yankee wins spread throughout the British fleet.

Then arrived the HMS Iron Duke. While the British frigate is not in Key West specifically for a rugby match -- its primary mission is working with the U.S. Coast Guard for anti-drug operations in the Caribbean -- the British squad clearly appreciated the irony of a match on the eve of this former colony's Independence Day.

"We're looking forward to a hard-fought, well-spirited match, hopefully picking up the first of many wins on the deployment," British Able Seaman Derek Skidmore said before the game.

"Playing just before Independence Day makes it even more fun, especially as we have also heard that they throw a great social afterwards."

Dos Santos also anticipated a hard match, though he anticipated an different outcome than Skidmore.

"I expect some hard hits out there," Dos Santos said Tuesday as the squad prepared for the contest. "It's a game played by hooligans and watched by gentlemen."

Friday night, the fourth match evened the score.

After the match, tradition calls for pints at the pub -- more specifically, Shanna Key -- where players revel in reliving particularly gruesome tackles.

"When that whistle blows, you extend your hand and enjoy a few beers," Dos Santos said.

No matter how friendly the rivalry and pleasant the pints, there is little danger the teams will encounter the same problem experienced in 1969.

These guys will not forget the score.

alinhardt@keysnews.com