Can’t bring her down: Nancy Ayu Ryan wriggles free from a tackle by a teammate during a training session.

All rugby players remember their first tackle, and the women who play for the Jakarta Banteng Rugby Club are no exception.

Tackling in rugby is not only difficult and scary, but it can leave you flat on your face in the mud watching your opponent race on ahead. Jakarta Banteng Rugby Club women’s team captain Kartika Esi still laughs every time she recalls her first attempt at tackling her opponents in a real match.

“I tried to tackle them, but because they were bigger than me, I was just hugging them while being dragged along,” Esi said.

Rugby is a full contact sport played with a distinctively shaped oval ball, first introduced in Jakarta during the colonial period.

It experienced a lull in popularity in the 1980s but was revived around 2004 by a dedicated bunch of Australian, New Zealand and Welsh expats, along with local Indonesians, Malaysians and Singaporeans in Jakarta.

Despite being a relatively new sport to the archipelago, rugby has experienced a blossoming of growth since its rebirth, with tournaments including the Jakarta 10s, the Jakarta 15s Series and the Bali 10s, which attracted a total of 36 teams from 10 countries and regions in 2018.

Esi was initially intimidated by the prospect of playing the sport when she first started two-and-a-half years ago.

Standing strong: Alvina “Vina” Gracia Sianturi, sweaty and tired after a two hour training session.

“I thought it was a dangerous sport [...] I was afraid to do it actually,” said Esi, a seasoned sportswoman who also plays hockey, soccer and works as a project development manager and soccer coach at Little Feet Soccer School. 

A sport too dangerous for women to play is a common misconception as Alvina “Vina” Gracia Sianturi described.

“My mum said this was a boy’s sport, why can’t you be in a feminine sport, why do you have to pick the extreme ones? But it’s not a boy’s sport. It is just a sport,” Vina said.

Vina, who sits in an office by day in her job as a social media manager alongside studying law, is an unstoppable force of energy with intense sincerity who clearly lives and breathes the game. As a prop her position involves locking into a scrum, in which she pushes her head down to force the opposing team backwards and control possession of the ball.

Once the game kicks in, the body takes over and simply knows what to do.

“You know yourself in rugby, when you initiate contact, you know what to do,” she said.

While most people see rugby as a rough, sometimes violently dangerous, sport, the women of the Jakarta Banteng Rugby Club all agree that such a perception is wrong and that the full contact team game becomes more and more inseparable from their lives the more they practice it.

Leader of the herd: Team Captain Kartika Esi makes eye contact with a teammate as she passes the ball.

“It’s not a dangerous game but it does become addictive,” said Carol Staunton, who is a former national player for Ireland and the current coach of Jakarta Banteng Rugby Club women’s team.

Staunton played for 10 years before moving to Indonesia to work for the Irish Embassy and she said rugby was the best discovery she ever made.

“I do believe that once more women and girls try rugby, the bigger it will grow,” Staunton said.

Team spirit and camaraderie is central to the ethos of the Jakarta Banteng Rugby Club women’s team members. The team’s symbol, a banteng (bull), represents this ethos because bulls are much stronger in a herd than alone.

Therefore, for Staunton and her players, rugby is a way for them to empower each other and to provide a brief moment of relief from thinking or worrying about the complexities of everyday life.

The brief moment of relief comes every Tuesday and Thursday evening, with a two-hour session of high energy touch rugby rather than a full contact match, technique practice exercises — ranging from throwing, catching and tackling — all while Staunton pays close attention.

 “I try and motivate my girls by telling them how good they are and how good they can be,” Staunton said.

Strong together: Without breaking hands, the Jakarta Banteng Rugby Club women’s team run across the pitch to develop coordination and awareness of each other during matches.

— Photos by JP/Wendra Ajistyatama

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The Jakarta Bantengs women’s and men’s teams train on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the rugby pitch next to The Jakarta Convention Center. They welcome new members of all abilities with open arms and tight tackles.