The dirt on gay rugby -
The Muddy York gay rugby club doesn’t mind getting mucked up. They’ll even play in the rain. But, oh, those stubborn dirt stains! The ruggers dragged a mud-splattered rugby shirt to fab in the hopes that a new appliance, Tide Buzz, could tackle the stains. The sandwich-grill-sized machine is equipped with a wand that squirts the Tide Buzz formula, then eradicates the stain by unleashing “ultrasonic rays.” How do those rays sound to Muddy York?

The team tosses their mud-caked shirt onto the table. Following instructions, they place a Tide-sanctioned sponge beneath the fabric, douse the stain with Tide Ultrasonic Cleaning Fluid and press the “lightening bolt.” A very faint buzz – the ultrasonic rays – hums across the stain. After 10 minutes of ultrasound, Ryan Wolman’s fed up. “No one’s going to sit here doing this,” he says. “I’d just buy new clothes.” But when they slip the sponge out from underneath, they find that it is indeed absorbing the stain. “What a surprise!” Martin Kuplens-Ewart says in his English accent. “The mud that got wet has seeped through to the pad!”

Not entirely convinced by the mud job, they spill wine over the shirt. “We should try beer stains,” says the team’s freshly shaven commissioner, Marc Charrier. “That’s the third half of our game.” Marc helped found the rugby team earlier this year. “Being jockish in the gay world, there weren’t a lot of avenues for us,” he says. Plus, he admits, rugby is “the only sport where you can put your head between two guys’ asses.”

Meanwhile, Martin’s been drilling the wine stain with the wand, but is getting a bad Buzz. “It’s turning grey,” he says of the stain. The team opts to repeat the experiment using water (instead of Tide Ultrasonic Cleaning Fluid), a napkin and an oversized green shark-shaped pen instead of the wand. They determine that this method will be just as effective. “All right! Green shark pen!” vice-commissioner Brian Montgomery cheers. “We’ll all buy the pen!” Marc yells. The Tide Buzz, on the other hand, will be raffled off, surely as a booby prize.

More on the Muddy York rugby team’s fabulous bachelor auction during the first week of November, at www.muddyyork.poolmatch.com. The Tide Buzz starter kit is $69.99.

• ryan porter