While both Williams and the New England Rugby Football Union (NERFU) are still investigating the matter, the player — currently recovering from second-degree burns — has revealed that his shirttail was set on fire at the end of a rugby party. While team members were extinguishing the blaze, he reached behind him to try to help and suffered a burn on his left palm.
According to WRFC members, the burned shirt has been a long-standing, though infrequently invoked in recent years, team tradition that has occurred in the past.
“It’s a practice that’s been around for as long as anyone on the team can recall, although there had been very few instances, if any, until this point this year,” said WRFC President Kevin Waite ’09. “It’s a practice the club’s leadership never officially condoned, and seeing it so infrequently, we pretty much forgot about it. Obviously it was a dangerous practice, as infrequently as it may have occurred, and I’m constantly kicking myself for not addressing it earlier.”
The WRFC are currently protesting the cancellation of their season, but have dropped their appeal to the NERFU sanction. In a letter to the editor to The Williams Record, Waite wrote that the suspension was “counterproductive.”
“We contended that by canceling our season, [Williams] College would temporally terminate what Harry Sheehy, director of Athletics, rightfully called the “healthy” element of our club, leaving the social aspect of rugby — the side that has traditionally drawn criticism — untouched,” wrote Waite on behalf of the team. “We all agreed that there is a cancerous club practice that needed to be eliminated. We simply worried that Williams College had chosen to amputate the wrong arm.”
Former ACRFC president and current member Romain Cames ’09 condemned the tradition and voiced the rugby team’s disappointment at their cancelled game.
“Every team has its traditions and they’re not always clever, far from it, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s dangerous to set a shirt on fire while a person is wearing it,” Cames said. “The reason why the rugby team is pretty [angry] is that’s the game for which we prepare all season and recruit heavily. That’s a very important game for the rugby team and to have it cancelled like this is kind of outrageous.”
The game, originally scheduled for May 2, was also ACRFC’s last game of the season and for many seniors on the team, their last chance to beat Williams.
“We have a couple of senior football players on the team this semester and they haven’t actually beaten Williams at football, this might have been their one opportunity to beat them,” said team member Simon Gao ’12.
Despite the disappointment, however, Cames looks to the positive side and remembers the fond memories of the season.
“On the plus side, our team is undefeated this season,” Cames said. “I think that for a lot of [team members], even if it was their first contact with rugby, it was a positive experience. I think they will remember the season as fun and we had five victories, which is a sharp contrast from last fall. So all in all, it’s positive.”