Why We Play

Eva Holland: I can still hear the quick crunch of his vertebrae cracking. That's the meddling of hindsight, of course — he was too far away, out in the middle of the night-dark field, and there were too many people around me and around him: the fans heckling, the grunts and dull thud of 16 men crashing together in the scrum, then an ominous silence. People breathing hard, whispering, yelling for help.

But whatever I heard or didn't hear, whatever tricks memory has since played, I knew as soon as the scrum collapsed in on itself that something was wrong. It was clear in the collective intake of breath from the crowd, in the way the other players shifted their feet and paced in circles while…