UNITED STATES QUAD RUGBY
ASSOCIATION
Team USA
3.5 Joe Soares
3.0 Brad Updegrove
2.5 Mike Wyatt
2.0 Dave Gould
2.0 Cliff Chunn
1.5 Bill Renje
1.0 Dave Ceruti
0.5 Eddie Crouch
New Zealanders loyal to nation's game
By Sherrell Evans, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
Photo: Australian Rodney Hamilton (6) gets the ball past New Zealand's Paul Leefe. New Zealand went on to win 39-23. (Eric Williams/AJC)
All his life, 23 year-old Geremy Tinker wanted to be one of the best rugby
players in New Zealand. The game, after all, is a national obsession, like baseball to
Americans.
In a regional semifinal match four years ago, however, Tinker's neck snapped. But he
wasted little time letting a challenge like the inability to walk -- or even to move his
arms much -- stand in his way.
He's in good company on the eight-member New Zealand team. Half of them
broke their necks while playing rugby but have refused to give up the notoriously brutal
sport. Quad rugby, its wheelchair version, spares little of the action of its more famous
predecessor.
Wheelchairs are routinely smashed and often flip over, giving the athletes precious few
moments to tuck their chins to their chest to keep their heads from getting smashed. A
member of the Australian quad rugby team suffered a fractured kneecap in training before
the Paralympics even began.
Tinker calls it "controlled violence."
Garry Croker, 31, had been good enough at rugby while in high school to
compete in regional finals in Australia.
He broke his neck when a match got out of hand, and he's now on the Australian quad rugby
team. He said he doesn't blame the sport.
"It could have happened walking across the street and getting hit by a car,"
Croker said. "It's just one of those things that happened."
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