‘A close kinship’

Rugby friends are friends for life. The presence of the long-defunct Homer Irish Lords at the Between the Tides Rugby Tourney at Millennium Square Field in Kenai on Saturday proves it.

With the Alaska Rugby Union celebrating its 50th anniversary this season, Dan Balmer, president and coach of the Kenai Wolfpack, decided to honor the Irish Lords at the Wolfpack’s annual tournament.

Balmer put out some inquiries on social media in the months leading up to the tournament and that led to John Fitzpatrick, Wayne Aderhold, Tom Klinker and Chip Duggan, all former Irish Lords, showing up at the Saturday tournament.

Fitzpatrick said the four have been in Homer over 30 years, been friends and raised families together.

“Rugby is how we met,” he said. “I worked in the oil fields. Wayne’s an engineer. Tom’s a fisherman. Rugby was a common ground. It’s what got us together.

“Homer’s a small town. I know a lot of people in Homer outside of rugby so we all probably would have been friends on different levels, but it’s a close kinship, no question.”

The general consensus among the group is the Homer Irish Lords went from 1979 to 1986. Balmer had a document with the Irish Lords listed as having won Alaska Rugby Union titles in 1980 and 1981.

In the end, though, it’s not the precise years of the club or state titles that matter.

“Rugby has always been half a sport and half social,” Fitzpatrick said. “If you lose the game you’d better win the party.

“Rugby Union, which is what we’re playing here, it’s an amateur sport. When you travel, when you play a team, you’re expected to host them. So there’s always a party afterward.”

Aderhold said he actually met Fitzpatrick when the two were on a flight to Anchorage that got rerouted to Kenai. The two spent the night on the floor of the airport and found they had both played rugby in college in the 1970s — Aderhold at the University of Virginia and Fitzpatrick at Syracuse University.

Aderhold was not living in Homer when the Irish Lords were founded, but he eventually took over the team presidency from Bob Evans.

“We were people in responsible positions sort of acting a bit irresponsibly for a while,” Aderhold said.

When Balmer reached out, Aderhold said memories came flooding back.

Such as the way people came out of the woodwork to play for the Irish Lords, like former central peninsula attorney Allan Beiswenger.

Or former Homer News cartoonist Steve Herbert drawing up the logo for the team.

Or Doug Schwiesow rigging up two wood-fired hot tubs on rails so the Irish Lords could ride in the Homer Winter Carnival in 1984.

Aderhold said people like Klinker made real sacrifices for the team, missing out on money from commercial fishing to play in tournaments.

Eventually, Aderhold said members got older and it became harder for all of them to devote so much time to rugby. There were not enough young players to keep the club going.

Aderhold and Fitzpatrick did keep playing Golden Oldies rugby, or rugby for those over 35, with an Alaska traveling team. Fitzpatrick said he traveled to New Zealand, Germany and Australia.

Fitzpatrick played rugby for the last time in Australia in 1999.

“I left my spikes in Darwin, Australia,” Fitzpatrick said. “I threw them over the goalposts and said, ‘That’s it.’”

Fitzpatrick said there are probably about 10 total members of the Irish Lords still living in Homer.

“We’ve got a fair number that are not living in Homer, but they’re still there,” he said.

Fitzpatrick said, as an original member of what is today called the Bird Creek Barbarians, he goes all the way back to the beginning of rugby in Alaska.

He’s thrilled with how the game has grown to women’s and youth categories, and with the top-flight Alaska Mountain Rugby Grounds opening in 2013 in Anchorage. He’s also happy rugby is being played on the peninsula again.

Balmer said the Between the Tides Tourney started in 2010. Balmer has been running it since 2015.

He said he found some kinship listening to how the Homer Irish Lords tried to keep the club going in a small town as everybody got older.

“We’re kind of the older side,” Balmer said. “I think Kenai is where rugby players go to retire, because we have a lot of guys who played elsewhere.”

Balmer said the team keeps making it work, even if it means recruiting experienced rugby players like Dallas Dudding to play in this year’s Between the Tides Tourney for the Wolfpack in the same week Dudding moved to town.

The Kenai coach also is happy a women’s team, the Kenai She-Wolves, was able to play at Between the Tides for the first time. Balmer said his next project is getting youth rugby going in the area.

In the tournament title games, Anchortown beat the Arctic Foxes 12-5 for the women’s title and the Manu Bears beat the Bird Creek Barbarians 21-5 for the men’s title.

In the men’s semifinals, the Manu Bears beat the Fairbanks SunDawgs 17-5 and the Barbarians beat the Wolfpack 17-0.

In men’s round-robin play, there was actually a team called Homer Irish Lords made up mostly of Kenai players. In men’s round robin, it was Wolfpack 17, Turnagain Bore Tide 5; Manu Bears 7, SunDawgs 0; Barbarians 22, Irish Lords 0; SunDawgs 12, Wolfpack 0; Barbarians 12, Bore Tide 0; and Manu Bears 50, Homer 0.

In women’s play, the Arctic Foxes defeated the She-Wolves 29-0 and Anchortown defeated the Fairbanks Ravens 10-5.