Hard-Nosed Individuals Ready to Get Dirty : Rugby: Old Mission Beach Athletic Club seeking its third national rugby championship.

By DANA HADDAD

May 10, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SAN DIEGO — Don’t be fooled by the soft hands or the warm smiles. Behind any oak desk in San Diego, they could sit, scarred, bandaged and bruised, but wearing tailored suits.

If you need to do business with one of them, this is not the week.

Mike Sanders, a real estate broker; Ron Zenker, a stock broker; and Dennis Panish, an assistant district attorney, put up a good front most of the time. But they can’t wait for the weekend.

They are too eager to get dirty, sweaty and bloody trying to help the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club win its third national rugby championship.

These men are seemingly unlikely rugby players.

OMBAC will play host to the Steinlager/USA Rugby National Club Championships Saturday and Sunday at Robb Field in Ocean Beach. Two games will be played each day between four regional champions: OMBAC, the Chicago Lions, Washington (D.C.) Rugby Football Club and the Dallas Harlequins.

OMBAC, champion in 1988 and 1989, is the favorite this year. The team is 17-0 in non-tournament games and 26-1 overall.

All over town this week, OMBAC rugby players are on the job. But their minds are on Robb Field.

It’s just that not all of those men are pouring cement, driving trucks or laying pipe, as one might expect of individuals who spend their spare time colliding into each other without protective gear.

“You mean rugby players don’t do makeup, body massages, bikini and body waxing and promote bikini contests?” said OMBAC wingman Paul Ramirez, who makes his living doing all that.

His teammates say he’s a hairdresser. Ramirez calls himself a fashion coordinator.

Fellow OMBAC players like to rib Ramirez, likening his life to that of Warren Beatty in the movie “Shampoo.” Ramirez, 27, 5-feet-8 and 165 pounds, a former football player at Castle Park High, makes a living by showcasing the beauty and femininity of pretty women.

On weekends, Saunders said, “he always shows up with the best-looking girls.”

Ramirez is one of several OMBAC players who have become a smooth operator in business but can’t help revealing a primitive side to his personality.

“I get a lot of crap from the guys on the team, because of my business,” he said. “And my clients were shocked when they found out that I played rugby. But a lot of the girls come out and watch. It’s heaven for them, seeing guys in shape beating on each other.”

Ramirez’s girls, however, might never have known him as a weekend warrior had he not shown up for work one day with two black eyes and a broken nose.

“(The nose is) a little off to one side now,” Ramirez said, laughing. “I’ve had cuts over both eyes. But scars and cuts will work for you. You get a little sympathy. It’s funny, promoting skin care with scars on your face.”

It’s usually when a white-collar rugby player limps into work on Monday morning that his double life is exposed.

“I was addressing a jury with a black eye once and I kind of had to explain to them that I was a rugby player,” said Panish, 30, who took up the sport at San Diego State before he went to law school. “You have to do that. They wonder about these things, and they’ll spend more time thinking about whether or not I was in a street fight than the case.”

“I’ve come into work with black eyes and stitches across my forehead,” said Saunders, 31, OMBAC’s captain. “The guys in the office know right off the bat that it was a rugby game.”

“I guess I’m not the most clean-cut stock broker,” said Zenker, who wears a scar from a 25-stitch gash he took above one eye. “I do a lot of work over the phone, so as long as I don’t look too ugly, I guess it’s OK. But I’ve had to explain to my new clients how I got this black eye or that scrape. They laugh. It helps break the ice.”

La Jolla attorney Pat Boyl, 50, an ex-player, also has war stories.

“The magistrate once called me into his office and asked me where I’d been during the weekend,” said Boyl, who, as OMBAC’s rugby committee chairman, now acts as sort of a team general manager.

Said Boyl: “Sometimes I would look in the mirror and say, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”

Boyl asked that question more often when he reached his mid-30s. That was when he gave up rugby, after three knee surgeries and about 15 years after his two front teeth got stuck in an opponent’s forehead in a violent collision.

“My teeth just snapped off,” Boyl said. “Everybody was paying attention to him because he was bleeding. I was walking around trying to find where my teeth were.”

Boyl, a big man who played one year of varsity football at California in 1959, is limited now because of the knee. But he wouldn’t trade his rugby experience.

“Rugby is just a unique kind of game, compared to the others,” he said. “You get to run with the ball and run over people. You get to hit people with the ball . . . that’s nice for an old lineman, running the ball through nine guys. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in being out there for 80 minutes without stopping, going both ways. The action is continuous. Sometimes you get your head split open a little bit.”

Boyl and Zenker, 27, are two of a kind. Both were linemen at Cal, though Zenker was a starter for three years and almost stuck with the New Orleans Saints as a rookie free agent in 1987. He played his high school ball at University of San Diego High, but never had the experience of running with a ball until he tried rugby.

“I don’t know how many years I played football and never touched the ball,” said Zenker, who is a 6-3, 260-pound nightmare running with the watermelon-shaped rugby ball. “If I get some steam going and I’m running around the end at their fly half--who goes about 180 if he’s lucky--there’s a lot of impact. But it usually goes the other way. He’s like a speed bump.”

“We call him ‘Zenk the Tank,’ ” Panish said.

It is on days like today--Fridays--that OMBAC players find themselves struggling to be productive. The office becomes a bullpen. Friday is the only day that Panish is not in Chula Vista court. He has just enough time in his schedule to begin “getting pumped” for Saturday’s game. By Wednesday, Zenker was getting fidgety at his downtown office, and Saunders started pacing the floor, thinking about the national championships.

“There’s already that build-up,” Saunders said. “I can’t sit down and stay at my desk.”

“I’m mentally starting to get ready for the games right now,” Zenker said. “I can’t think about it too much, because I’ve got to think about my clients’ money. But I have certain goals and aspirations for my rugby team.”

By the end of the week, Panish, who is trained to be a bulldog in court, is ready to loosen the knot in his tie.

“It’s good to get your aggressions out on the weekends,” he said. “If I didn’t, I’d probably be working more, and who needs that? I’m in court all day. It’s good to get out and cut loose a little bit.”

There is a saying--origins unknown--that soccer is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans and rugby is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen.

It is also a game that attracts little interest in America, because it is difficult for the viewer to understand. Ironically, the players themselves don’t always understand why they play the game.

“I don’t know what inspires a person to become a rugby player,” Zenker said. “I don’t get paid. I get stitches here and there . . .”

Said Ramirez: “I love the hard contact. The satisfaction just isn’t there in other sports.”

Said Boyl: “People who are attracted to this sport are the same people who ignored their mother’s instructions not to play tackle football or to jump into a dog pile. There’s a lot of little boy in rugby.

“Of course, if you’re on the bottom of the pile . . . there’s no little boy in that.”