Rugby club Ascrum must admit women starting this year: how's that going?
No women, no subsidy. That's what rugby club Ascrum was told last year by the UvA and HvA. As of last September, therefore, the first, brave women mingle with the male rugby players. “I thought those women were terrifying!”
Whoever walks into Ascrum's clubhouse will imagine himself in a man's den stinking of lager and sweat. An old print on the wall shows four board members in their big, bare buttocks in front of the Rijksmuseum, flattened trophies and looted ties cover the walls and the boardroom is full of pictures of women in exciting positions.
Yet as of this year, the first female students have been tentatively throwing a ball around on the training field. On Wednesday night, about 15 women fought over who could get to the "try-line" first.
One of the girls accidentally kicks a ball toward an Ascrummer, who sits on a camp chair outside the field watching. The male spectators gingerly toss the balls back. Asked their opinion of the women's arrival, they shrug. ''Cock or ball'' (a game where the senior must guess whether the freshman has his testicle or his penis in his hand, ed.) is getting a little tricky to play in a mixed clubhouse now,'' one burly Ascrummer muses. “'Lip or clit’ is just a bit harder,'' his teammate adds.
Last August, three weeks before the start of the season, the rugby club received a new requirement for a subsidy from Student Sport Amsterdam (SSA). They would no longer receive money from the HvA and UvA unless they admitted women immediately.
As women's coach Damiaan Bijl (24) jogged cheerfully off the field, he complained with a grin that such a quick change was, of course, an impossible request. “We couldn't just integrate women within three weeks into a club that has revolved around men for more than 60 years. There was little sympathy from the members to suddenly have to start bringing women into our culture at the association without consultation. Many guys were also a bit afraid that that unique, togetherness atmosphere of Ascrum would disappear if guys automatically started acting tough towards the women,” explains the criminal law student.
Inside the “Het IJzeren Huisch” clubhouse, Bijl explains how the women's team was nevertheless enthusiastically set up. To arrange enough women for an entire unmixed team, the mixed student club AMC Rugby was approached. The hospital's rugby club was offered the use of Ascrum's fields, material, and union membership. In return, a combination team of the two clubs was set up this year. On Mondays, the Ascrum/AMC women train with the remaining men from AMC Rugby. On Wednesdays, the women train alone under the direction of Bijl and a changing coach from Ascrum.
“The Ascrum coaches are still a little too easy on us,” says Anthe van Poll (19), who started playing rugby this year, by contrast. Van Poll was looking for a more tactical sport than soccer, for which student teams also existed. "And I love it!" Online, however, only big guys seemed to play rugby. “But Anika (a member of AMC Rugby) tried to lure me into Intreeweek for her club. Damien, who was also there, called for me to come to Ascrum. A week later they had sort of merged.” So during the drinks after practice, it is the AMC women who scream the loudest: they fire up their teammates, and a yelling Bijl, to do beer relays, and it is their music that blasts out of the stereo thrown on the bar.
In the meantime, no one makes a point of this nevertheless “somewhat forced” merger either, observes Ascrum president Sven Mulder (24) while tapping a free pitcher for the women in attendance. Mulder's chairman's jacket hangs tattered from years of pulling on administrators, and his mullet hangs carelessly on his shoulders. The architecture student seems like a new-style chairman: not so corporate and seemingly more progressive.
Ideal for what Mulder believes is already a smooth integration of women with the men: “I already took a rugby woman myself to our gala this year.” Mulder's priority now, however, is to appoint the right confidant. “Look, by far the majority of Ascrummers behave normally, but there are always some who with a drink on can't behave around the men, either. I don't want such guys to possibly have a hand held over their heads.”
Coach Bijl is also a little afraid of a change in culture. “Men behave differently when women are present. They become more like gorillas.” This evening, however, the few men present keep quiet, talking mainly about their studies, their upcoming match, and briefly about Israel-Palestine. While the women drink merrily around a table, the men argue some more about the too-Dutch hits of a jovial Brabander. Freshman Van Poll is more concerned with playing dice against her new teammates: “I don't socialize like that. But I think you guys are really fun.”
At the first mixed evening the men also caused no problems. Says Bijl: “Guys shout a lot of nonsense in the locker room and then they come into the clubhouse with the women and all stand in a corner.” At the bar, teammate Luc Verwijs (25) agrees, laughing: “I thought it was terrifying.”
The first big challenge is the mixed match day on November 18th, when both the Ascrum men and women will play and run around. The fields look dark and deserted now, but then it will be swarming with men wearing ties and jackets. “We don't want to force such Ascrum culture down their throats, either,” coach Bijl stressed. So the Ascrum board is leaving the female students free to come up with their own activities, without men, such as bowling or a women’s dinner.
How exactly the women will move within the association in the future is still open anyway. “I’ll be happy if they can just play real matches instead of first-year games,” coach Bijl says hopefully. But actually mixing them up with the men at training sessions or on the board is not something chairman Mulder sees yet. “They do that in Leiden, for example. They are always bullied about that by other students.” Mulder's board itself is betting on two boards under the same name with occasional overlap in activities. “But the future will tell.”
What about the future of those bare buttocks, nude posters and “cock or ball”? Player Van Poll is not so concerned with that. “Yo, I want to play rugby more than anything.” Sober chairman Mulder doesn't really see a problem with that, either. “I'm very liberal in sexuality. I'm not part of this society where men and women have to be strictly separated and absolutely not allowed to see anything of each other.” This is another reason why Mulder is pleased that there are now both men and women at the club. “In rugby, we are a bit more laid back about our bodies anyway. I hope that in the future we can just freely look at someone's cock or tits without any conservative stuff. Maybe the women and men of Ascrum will take a leading role in that!”
