History of UNCRFC

Summer rugby was something of a tradition during the 70s as pick up teams from Raleigh and Chapel Hill would play a home and away pair of matches on Friday evenings in August. These were informal but intense matches that pitted old rivals and produced some excellent rugby. Sandy Seaton, currently a professor of Chinese at UNC, played regularly in these matches. The 1980s saw the regular influx of British and South African Morehead Scholars who were to revitalize the student influence in the Club and make UNC a top university rugby club through the present. Donald Munro, Nic Addison, Robert Mocatta, Hamish Stevenson, Rick Field, Tom Godfrey, John Love, Adrian Biddell all played outstanding rugby in the early and mid 80s and gave UNC a reputation for hard, fast, running, smart rugby. The international flavor extended to South America when UNC toured Venezuela in 1982 beating the University of Simon Bolivar and the Venezuela President’s side in Caracas. The latter game was played before a crowd of 10,000 and a national television audience. UNC won 30-0 and 27-0. Tours to the Bahamas in 1980 and Bermuda in 1983 set UNC on a touring schedule that has seen the Club travel out of the country almost every year right up to the present.

Bristol University came for a re-match in 1981 and UNC were prepared. Led by Donald Munro and Hamish Stevenson and backed by Steve Nash we were the better team in a match played on Carmichael Field, but lost we lost 16-21 on penalty kicks to a side that included a Wasp and Gloucestershire player and the future captain of Scotland. That match was probably the best rugby seen in Chapel Hill. In 1981 the club won the state college championship, the first of several for the Club including the most recent in 1992.

Bristol University came back in 1983 and played a weaker UNC club winning 27-3 on a field in Glen Lennox which had become the playing home of the UNC Club. At the same time there was an attempt to create a city club, the Orange Club, led by Ricketts, Nash, the Johannes brothers, Tim and Bob, and Tom Parks. The city club played 10 matches over two years but both the University side and the city club ran into a shortage of quality players. Playing as UNC, the club won the Wake Forest Tournament two years running, 1981 and 1982, the Michelob Cup in 1982 through 1985 when it was retired by the Durham Bidweiser distrbutor, but UNC lost the state college championship in 1982. After one of those maddening administrative technicalities, UNC wasn’t entered in the 1983 Wake Forest Tournament but a team from Pennsylvania turned up with only 7 players. With the addition of the core of the UNC A-side, the mixed 15 won the tournament much to the dismay of the tournament administrators.

In 1984 we planned for a royal visit. Prince Edward was to come with the Jesus College, Cambridge side that spring and the Club was noticed by University officials who all of a sudden became more forthcoming with funds and fields. Eddie Windsor got mono and didn’t make it and the Club lost to Jesus unexpectedly after a 5-0 start and a 2-1 tour to the Bahamas beating Freeport and Buccaneers and losing to Baillou. Later that year UNC lost to a huge Askeans side at night on Ehringhaus Field 16-3. Carolina saw the ball maybe four times as the visitors played 10-man rugby to perfection. The Askeans had several first class players who had moved up from the school side.

1985 saw Richard Hoile take over as President and captain along with Dave Pardini as co-captain. Carolina won the Collegiate championship with a side that was now all students and that was to remain so to the present. The next two years saw the Union restrict college sides to undergraduates and the last of the older Chapel Hill city players either retired or left town. UNC remained strong in the college ranks but the city clubs were now superior in open play and UNC couldn’t compete with Raleigh, Charlotte and Cape Fear as the dominant clubs in the State. Carolina could, however, compete with any university or college side and did so successfully winning state championships in 1986 but losing in close matches to East Carolina almost annually until the breakthrough in 1992.

In the fall of 1995 a very strong Bristol University group returned to Chapel Hill for two matches. Carolina was in a rebuilding phase and could manage to hold the visitors to 52 points, a better showing than the Charlotte club who lost by 66 points. The B game was an equal mismatch. A tour to Cayman Island over Thanksgiving helped the team gain better cohesion but the matched results weren’t great as Carolina lost to the Cayman A-side and a club team from Toronto.

Touring remained a high priority for the club and in the late 80s they have gone to Jamaica twice, Trinidad twice, the Bahamas, Grand Cayman in 1991 and the fall of 1995, and had a fall tour to England in 1993. The Morehead Scholar connection continued with Tom Silk, Jeremy Kelly and others who can tell their own story of how they come on and lead the team to consistent winning seasons.

Tom Ricketts
Chapel Hill, NC
November 1994, April 1996

Tom is currently a professor in UNC's Department of Public Health. He can be contacted at trickett@email.unc.edu.