AAt the United States Military Academy at West Point, rugby has best winning record any men's sports program. “Brothers for Three,” a new documentary about the team released this week, opens with scenes of wild joy in Houston, Texas, in 2022, as the Black Knights beat Saint Mary's of California to win their first college title in the United States.
Yet director Sean Mullin's film is filled with loss.
On the field, of course, there are losses.
Mullin and writer-producer Brian Anthony are West Point graduates and also play rugby. They intended to follow their successors into the 2022-23 season by defending their title under captain and mainstay Larry Williams. 2022 US Player of the Year. Everything started well: seven wins in a row. But then Navy, longtime enemies, defeated Army 27-14. Mullin's cameras then followed coach Matt Sherman and his team as the wheels came off.
“I was told that West Point rugby players were promoted to general at a much higher rate than their classmates,” Williams says in the final film. “After winning the national championship, I thought I knew why, but I didn’t.
“I learned that being a good leader is not about how much you win, but how you handle losses.”
In one scene in the film, filmed behind normally closed doors, Williams fails to deliver. After a tough loss at Lindenwood in Missouri, in a locker room littered with dirt and torn tape, Sherman asks his captain to speak. Williams searches for words that just don't come.
“I have nothing,” he mutters.
By the end of the film, the team had lost its national crown, the Navy, and its captain, Williams, had suffered a serious ankle injury.
After Lindenwood, Mullin also makes a startling film with Conor Fay, the team's blindside flanker and poet (required to write odes for the bus and the bar), with his ear torn and bleeding, blood seeping onto his shirt. Later, in the second of three tough losses to Navy, Fay makes a tackle and collapses in obvious pain.
“Another damn knee,” Sherman exclaims in voiceover. “Jesus.”
Nobody said rugby or West Point was easy. But because the academy is an academic and physical pressure cooker of brutal training and intense classroom standards, Mullin and Anthony document how West Point rugby uses stereotypes familiar from the world game—the tight bonds of brotherhood (or sisterhood), sometimes regrettable behavior, usually regrettable singing on the bus, pain shared and relieved one at a time—and introduce each with furious relief.
There are significant highs, including an unlikely playoff win over Davenport and the abundance of an evening section when the fourth-year “freshmen” learn which weapons they will serve with. There are significant declines. The final playoff loss—again to fucking Navy—is dealt with quickly, as if just to get it done.
Rugby is just a game. But what a game. Mullin shows why so many people love it. Pure adrenaline, raucous laughter and even shaggy beauty in close-ups of tackles and kicks, rucks and mauls, tense scrums and jumping corridors, pre-match crowds ending with shouts of “Brothers Three!”
The West Point team salutes before a home game. Image: Courtesy of Brothers on Three.
But Mullin's film also looks beyond the field – where loss comes back into the frame.
Like Mullin, Jan Weikel graduated from West Point in 1997. After 9/11, Mullin served at Ground Zero. Weikel went to Iraq. Mullin's film included footage from Weikel's time in the country, explaining how to survive in a convoy during an IED war. On April 18, 2006, in Balad, Weikel's car was hit by a roadside bomb. He was killed. He was 31.
In other old footage, to the hum and crackle of old videotapes, Weikel holds his young son Jonathan in his arms or reads to the boy the books he must listen to when his father goes off to fight. There is footage of Weikel's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, with horses pulling the coffin on an artillery caisson. In the videotape of Weikel making the interception at West Point, his widow speaks into the camera.
“Rugby meant so much to Ian,” says Wendy Green. “When I first met him, he said, 'You should come to my rugby game. And I was like, “What is rugby?” I went and I remember him coming up to me on the sideline and sticking his tongue out and just looking like this adorable puppy covered head to toe in mud and dirt. I was simply amazed. I thought, “Okay, I love rugby.” We fell in love.”
Love also runs through Mullin's film. Twenty-one army rugby players died in the service of their country. In the very first scenes of Brothers for Three, a great night in Houston '22, a big, bearded old player in an army cap and T-shirt congratulates hooker Matthew Meehan by shouting the hooker's name from his own West Point team.
“I’m a 2002 graduate,” the veteran says, beaming and showing off his tattooed arm. “Jimmy Gurbish was killed in Iraq in 2005. You left that jersey better than when you found it, brother.
This is where I come into play. In 2002, Gurbish was part of the West Point team that toured London and played against my club. Years later from New York I wrote piece and then book about this team, about what happened to them in the wars after 9/11. While working on the book, I met the big bearded veteran from Mullin's film: Brian Phillips, my colleague in the second row 23 years ago. I also met Mullin and Anthony. We talked on the sidelines and in banquet halls, at memorials, in cinema halls. And now, in the first scenes of the finished film, I am here on the screen helping with the production: telling the American audience what this strange game is and why so many cadets love it and each other so much.
Therefore, I cannot claim to be an impartial reviewer. Not even close. I attended the ceremony that now features one of the film's most poignant scenes: the scattering of the ashes of Clint Olearnick, another too-young 2002 player, on the West Point field on a scorching fall day. Mullin and his team captured the silent contemplation of his teammates as they said goodbye to their brother. Clint's widow Diana and daughter Zosha share his team bond.
And yet, one big loss hangs over all the “Brothers on Three”. Michael Mahan graduated from West Point in 1970, commanded troops, became a lieutenant colonel, returned to Hudson to teach. He never played rugby but eventually became a rugby coach. 16 seasons In general, seeing combat sports – “war minus shooting”, said George Orwell as the ideal vehicle for training future leaders in combat.
Mahan died last summer at age 76. His funeral took place in Massachusetts. The old players came from all over America. Shots were heard over the grave.
Mullin and Anthony dedicate their film to Mahan, giving him the first and last words. In the end credits, he explains his role in creating Women's Army Rugby (WAR), a thriving university program. Next Friday, November 14, his old players will gather again at West Point for a showing of “Brothers for Three” and the next day, during the big game against the Navy, for the unveiling of a memorial statue.
For everyone else, brothers for three Premiere in Los Angeles on Thursdaythen plays in select US theaters.
