Guest Author: Kat Latham on Rugby

Hi everyone! As you see we’ve got Kat Latham visiting with us today! She writes rugby romances, and if you haven’t read them, you’re missing out! But you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say, right? 😉 So without further ado … Ms. Latham!

The hottest sport in America

Hi, everyone! Thank you so much to Lime for asking me to join you guys today.

For those of you who haven’t read my books, I write about rugby, which I think is the hottest sport in the world, but it’s not a sport I ever learned about when I was growing up in San Diego.

After college, I moved to the Czech Republic and met a British guy who loves rugby, and I fell in love with him so I ended up spending lots of time in smoke-choked sports bars watching rugby. And guess what–it turns out I loved the sport too. With its fast pace, extreme athleticism and hard hits–not to mention its players’ incredible bums and thighs–it’s the perfect sport for someone like me, who isn’t usually a sports fan.


Because I never heard anything about rugby when I was growing up, it took me by surprise to learn that it’s now one of the fastest growing sports in America. A big reason for its growing popularity is a form of the sport called rugby sevens (or rugby 7s, depending on the website you look at), which is going to be an Olympic sport for the first time in Rio 2016. Rugby hasn’t been an Olympic sport since 1924, when the U.S.A. won gold. That’s right, the U.S. is the reigning Olympic champion at rugby. Feel free to bring that up the next time someone tells you how amazing the New Zealand All Blacks are. (Okay, they are amazing. Like, seriously amazing.)

As the name suggests, in rugby sevens there are only seven players from each team on the field instead of 15, but the field is the same size as a regular rugby pitch. And each half only lasts seven minutes, instead of 40. That makes it perfect for weekend tournaments. Fans can see a ton of fast-paced matches in a day or two.

The Rugby Sevens World Series features tournaments around the world, including the USA Sevens in Las Vegas. Up till a few years ago, my hometown of San Diego hosted the USA’s tournament. The tournaments are well known for their festival atmosphere and fans’ wacky costumes. I would love to go to one!

If you want to learn more, this is a great, short introductory video.

Rugby sevens also features in my upcoming book, Taming the Legend. The hero is a professional rugby player in London who comes to the U.S. to coach an amateur rugby sevens team–and, in the process, falls back in love with the one lover he’s never gotten over. I hope readers love the book–and maybe discover that they love rugby, too!

Have you ever watched a rugby match or seen a rugby sevens tournament? If so, what did you think?

Taming the Legend Book four of the London Legends

When retiring rugby star Ash Trenton considered his next career move, coaching troubled teens at his ex-girlfriend’s California camp wasn’t on the list. But when Camila Morales reappears after eighteen years, begging for his help, he can’t say no to his first and only love.

Camila was just sixteen when Ash moved on to start his rugby career, leaving her heartbroken…and on her own to make a life-changing decision. Now she needs his help to win a tournament prize and save her camp. Relying on Ash is the last thing she wants. But while it’s hard to get over being dumped for a sport, it’s even harder to ignore the rush of attraction that has only gotten stronger after so many years apart.

Coaching teens is the hardest job Ash has ever had, and the task becomes personal when he begins to fall for Camila all over again. But when he is offered his dream job, will he choose the job—or the woman whose heart he already sacrificed once?

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6 thoughts on “Guest Author: Kat Latham on Rugby

  1. Kim

    I love rugby and I love Kat’s books. I’m also a huge fan of Rosalind James Escape to New Zealand series about the All Blacks. My husband played college football, but if he’d not been born in the US, he’d definitely would have been a rugby player. The womens’ rugby7s play one of their big events at the university near us, and in that dead time between the end of college football and the beginning of baseball season, we watch a lot of rugby–Premiership, Guinness Pro12 and Six Nations (but we can’t get Super Rugby because we don’t have a dish). And some of my son’s friends who played football in high school have played rugby in college. My husband played club rugby for awhile in college, too. It’s fast and exciting, although I’m not big on costumes, etc. so the 7’s is not something I’d probably go to in person! I like Union.

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  2. hkhelen

    Rugby + Romance. Two of my favourite things, together! I am totally going to have to investigate this further. (And ponder the question of why I haven’t sooner).

    Given that rugby is my favourite sport (sevens or union. I’ll watch league if I have to, but it isn’t my favourite code), my answers to the question posed above, “Have you ever watched a rugby match or seen a rugby sevens tournament? If so, what did you think?” could fill a book. I’ll try to be brief with my squee.

    I get to be totally hipster about my love of sevens. I grew up in Hong Kong, which is home to the premier/biggest/best/partiest tournament of the World Series (I’m biased, but that doesn’t make it any less true), but I started attending in the early 80s. My Dad took me to my first HK7s when I was two-and-a-half years old. I still have the t-shirt. Those were the days, back when it wasn’t about the costumes and the partying, when the teams playing weren’t professional, before there was a World Series, when it was all about pure love of the game, man. /hipster I attended pretty much every year between the ages of two and 18, and had just the best time, every year. I currently live in Edinburgh, which was brilliant for when the penultimate tournament of the World Series was held there (2007- 2011). Currently, the Scottish sevens is held in Glasgow, which is a bit more of a effort to get to, but I still go, because I just adore the game.

    I started to go into to a whole thing about how living in Edinburgh is awesome for rugby, because the Scotland Rugby team play their home games here, at Murrayfield Stadium, but then I started explaining the Six Nations tournament, and the Autumn International series, and it was getting looooooong. And I haven’t even touched on the fact that I’ve only been talking about international level rugby, when professional club rugby is awesome (Leicester Tigers FTW), and then there’s non-professional clubs, and and and and suffice to say, yes, I have watched a LOT of rugby in my time, and I adore it.

    I love the game itself, I love the atmosphere of the crowds, whether in a sold out stadium for an international game, or a bunch of friends huddled together on the sidelines of a non-professional game on a cold and windy day, with muddy boots and hands cradling tea for warmth, screaming themselves hoarse as they cheer on their friends. It is going to sounds trite, but it really is the spectators that make rugby for me. Rugby fans are, by and large, lovely people. And the boys playing aren’t exactly hard to look at. XD

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  3. hkhelen

    And I never said anything about rugby sevens being part of the Commonwealth Games (I went last year), and my excitement about it being part of the Olympics from Rio 2016, and and and and and. I have a LOT of feels about rugby.

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  4. helenajust

    I endorse all hkhelen says. Us Brits have a tendency to look at American football and think: what’s all the fuss about? You’re padded up to the nines and you keep stopping for a rest: you should try playing rugby if you think you’re hard enough.

    Seriously, it’s a great game. I’ve started watching it again after a few years without, and it seems to me that they’ve changed the rules a little and really keep it moving now. Sevens is a very different game, but still great fun. (And yes, the Hong Kong Sevens is the pinnacle of it.)

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