The men’s rugby team, a club celebrating their 50th season at Fordham, is looking to build on the recent success of the school’s other club sports by performing well in their 2012 season in the newly founded Empire Rugby Conference (ERC).

In 2010, the sailing team qualified for their first national championship regatta, and the hockey team clinched their 11th consecutive postseason appearance, en route to winning their second championship. The Men’s Rugby team will look to replicate this level of success in their 2012 season, as a sluggish start in their new conference has killed all hope for success this season.

Their new conference, the ERC, was founded earlier this year as a product of USA Rugby’s reorganization of the sport at the collegiate level.  Instead of following the old Division I model, USA Rugby has replaced it with a conference system similar to those used in NCAA football.  The ERC consists of nine teams that are divided into two divisions based on geographic location. Fordham plays in the Eastern Division against Iona College, SUNY Stony Brook, and USMMA at King’s Point. The teams in this division play a six-game season consisting of a home-and-home series game against each of the other teams.

The Rams are off to a disappointing 0-4 start and are looking to regain the form they had in their old conference, the Metropolitan New York Rugby Union (METNY). In the METNY, the Rams won championships in 2003, 2004, and most recently in 2009, when the Rams were the number one seed in the playoffs.

However, unlike a varsity sport, it is very difficult to keep strong teams intact because attendance is not mandatory. One of the two team captains, Seth Houston, Fordham College at Rose Hill (FCRH) ’13, said, “We don’t have as much of a structured schedule as most of the NCAA sports have. We practice three times a week and you make the practices when you can.”

If the athletes do not attend practice on a regular basis, odds are they won’t play in the weekly match, but this year the Rams are working around this problem because of a drastic increase in their roster size. This season men’s rugby consists of 46 undergraduate athletes with a very strong representation from the freshmen class. “This year we recruited 15 freshmen,” Houston said.  “Last year, recruitment was a little slow, but it picked up this year, which was great because roster depth is a commodity.”

Fordham still has two games remaining on their schedule where they can salvage what’s left of their season and gather momentum and experience heading towards the 2012 campaign. In order to improve as a team, Houston noted that recruitment of strong athletes is always important, but having committed athletes is in some ways more important. “The most realistic way to improve is to have guys that can attend the practices,” Houston said. “I know it can be tough to make all three practices a week, but if we have guys that attend on a consistent basis, we will improve faster as a team. We have to find a way to make attendance matter.”

Fordham rugby’s 50th season as a club sport wasn’t as successful as some of their previous seasons, but that won’t stop them from playing their hardest.  The team’s next game will be an away game on Oct. 21 against conference rival Stony Brook. Then they will return home a week later to play the final game of the season against Iona.