For the last 17 years, the Scrum Axe has remained in the Doc Hudson Memorial Fieldhouse adjacent to Witter Rugby Field, a perpetual reminder of Cal’s reign as king of Bay Area rugby.
Only twice in the last decade of matchups has Stanford put up more than seven points on the Bears. Since 2010, Cal hasn’t allowed its South Bay opponent a single point, outscoring the Cardinal 282-0. In last year’s match, the Bears put up an NBA score en route to a 109-0 shutout.
But even in the aftermath of a triple-digit victory last year, Cal head coach Jack Clark found holes in his team’s performance. Is there any kind of performance that can satisfy coach Clark?
“Probably nothing,” he said, laughing. “I’m not easily satisfied. There’s always something to work on.”
With Cal all but assured of a victory against Stanford on Saturday at 2 p.m., the Bears, as usual, will be more focused on their own play than that of their opponents.
With a varsity roster still shuffling itself out, the weekend will be more an opportunity for the Bears to learn about themselves than to learn about anyone else.
“We haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about Stanford,” Clark said. “We’ve got our own objectives going into that game, just to get on song with ourselves.”
The Bears have breezed to a 5-0 record in the opening week of the 15s season, most recently taking down Santa Clara on Wednesday in an 81-0 blowout that featured Cal’s freshmen and sophomores against the Bronco varsity. But even in victory the Bears were far from perfect, too willing to lean on their overwhelming athleticism and size instead of playing according to Clark’s system.
Until the quality of its opponents improves, the goal for Cal right now is to develop the habits that they’ll need against top-tier teams later this year.
“We need to keep working on systems and little mistakes,” senior center Seamus Kelly said. “Just keep improving on finer details, a lot of timing things, interplay between backs and forwards — those kinds of things.”
After being shunted away from their home field due to remodeling of the adjacent Memorial Stadium, the Cal varsity will be returning to Witter Rugby Field for the first time in nearly three years. Like its larger neighbor to the northwest, the field has been revamped, featuring a leveled synthetic playing surface, new scoreboards and taller goalposts.
Though Wednesday’s matchup was technically the first Cal match on the new field, Saturday’s battle for the Scrum Axe will be the official reopening.
“Witter Rugby Field — it’s the center of the universe for us, you know,” Clark said. “It’s our home, and it means the world to us.”
With the outcome hardly in doubt, Witter Field’s grand reopening might outweigh the match itself.
“I just remember the first time I walked out there as a freshman,” Kelly said, “and I can’t really describe how tremendous the atmosphere is. It’s something really special, and it’ll make the game all the more special to us.”
Chris Yoder covers rugby. Contact him at [email protected]