Sam Boyd gets ready for rugby

Here are some things you’ll need if you plan on throwing a rugby party/tournament anytime soon, which Las Vegas will do in a few weeks:

Argentines, Australians, Canadians, some Englishmen, Fijians, Frenchmen, a handful of Japanese with broad shoulders, Kenyans, the Portuguese, Samoans, Scotsmen, South Africans, Uruguayans, Welshmen. Americans, who will make a fine host and are ranked ninth in the rugby table. And don’t forget the All Blacks from New Zealand.

A ball shaped like Joel Goodson’s mom’s artsy-fartsy glass egg in “Risky Business.”

No shoulder pads. You won’t be needing those. Helmets? Maybe. But only those little lightweight ones, which, far as I can tell, offer little protection in a scrum among Fijians and Samoans.

You will need beer. Lots and lots of beer. A reservoir of beer. Maybe even a river — an Amazon River of beer.

And grass. You also will need grass.

No, not that kind, for although Jamaica plays most of the British sports, such as cricket, it is not really known as a rugby-playing nation. Jamaica is more known as a track and field nation, thanks to Usain Bolt, and a bobsled nation, thanks to John Candy.

The grass you will need for rugby is a 1½-inch-thick blend of tall fescue and perennial rye. A cool-season blend, because you never know what the weather is going to be like from Feb. 13 to 15 when the HSBC Sevens World Series returns to Sam Boyd Stadium.

The grass for this year’s rugby pitch was put down Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. A total of 90,000 square feet of it— a Cheech Marin, Snoop Dogg-sized portion. It was put down in big rolls trucked in on flatbed trailers from Valley Sod Farms, LLC, in Sandy Valley near the California state line.

One year it was so cold the sod rolls froze, and it was a bitch putting them down. Not this year. This year it was 70 degrees when they rolled out the sod right over top of the Sam Boyd field turf.

There are certain types of field turf on which you can play rugby. You can’t play it on the kind at Sam Boyd; it’s too hard. I’m told, however, the Fijians and Samoans would play rugby in the asphalt parking lot, if that’s all you had, because Fijians and Samoans have a reputation for being tough.

On Tuesday, I was invited to watch them put down the rugby pitch.

The young woman from the public relations firm asked if I knew how to get to the end zone, because that’s where those responsible for installing the temporary grass rugby field would be.

I said I did not play football for UNLV or Colorado State, which also had trouble getting to the end zone against Utah in the Las Vegas Bowl a couple of weeks ago. So, yes, I knew how to get there.

When I arrived, the end zone was no longer the end zone. It was the section of tall fescue and perennial rye between the try line and the dead ball line.

A try in sevens — short for “try at goal” — is like a football touchdown, except it’s worth five points, and the player scoring the try must touch the egg-shaped ball to the turf for it to be one. Spiking the rugby ball is frowned upon.

The three men standing beyond the try line were smiling. Michael Hackney’s smile was just a bit wider than the other two’s; he’s the president of Valley Sod Farms, LLC. The HSBC Sevens World Series is good for business, because Sam Boyd Stadium has a pretty big backyard on which to roll out sod.

Kip Wolfe is vice president of operations for Key Golf, which prepares and maintains golf courses in town. Wolfe was smiling, because unlike last week, it was 70 degrees and the giant sod rolls were not frozen.

The third man, who sported a distinctive red-orange goatee, was Rob Cornelius of Las Vegas-based United World Sports. Cornelius was smiling mostly because he played rugby growing up in Colorado, and rugby players tend to smile a lot, at least after the match when they’ve got a Guinness in each hand.

Cornelius also was smiling because he is the one who must give the field the final OK before the Fijians and Samoans and the All Blacks Sevens, et al, are allowed onto it, and the representatives of the rugby-playing nations are a lot easier to please than, say, the representatives of international soccer sensation Cristiano Ronaldo.

Each and every blade of tall fescue had to be in place — and God forbid there be a seam — before Ronaldo’s people would allow Ronaldo to set foot on it when Real Madrid played an exhibition game at Sam Boyd a couple of summers ago.

By the time I left the try line, the skinny rugby goal posts were in place. Workers already had turned their giant water hoses on the tall fescue and rye. The Kenyans hadn’t arrived yet, and neither had the beer trucks, but they’ll be here soon enough.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.