Students are being turned off sport by extreme initiation ceremonies involving dead animals and painful forfeits.
The initiations include chilli powder being applied to sensitive areas, believed to be the genitals.
Players are also apparently being coerced into taking part in an extreme version of "apple bobbing" where they have to fish dead rats from buckets with their mouths, and freshers report having vomit thrown over them.
According to a report in The Times , Loughborough University students were challenged to drink four litres of cider and then the participants were all then sick in a bucket. The last to finish had the vomit thrown at him.
Students at the University of Bath were blindfolded, ordered to put their hands out and then urinated on.
The two universities declined to comment to The Times.
There were also reports at other universities of carrots being inserted into players, and of a so-called "human centipede", which involves players in a line sticking their thumbs into the backsides of the team-mates in front of them.
According to the report the activities have discouraged some players from competing in university rugby.
The RFU estimates that 10,000 recent school leavers have stopped playing rugby union since the end of last season and while some will always stop when they hit 18 there is a concern extreme rugby culture is driving fans of the game away.
One poster on the website The Student Room wrote a month ago about how he quit university rugby over the initiations and culture .
He said: "I played 1st team rugby last year but packed it in a couple of months in.
"The culture is something I despised though. I wasn't sure if I wanted to play for the uni or a club but they asked me to play so I just went along with it.
"If you're in your first year or a new player, you're basically expected to suck up to the older guys. We had forfeits at training if we missed a social or whatever.
"The initiation was the final straw for me, don't wanna be too extreme with it on here but we were expected to drink whatever they asked us to and I'm not talking alcohol and strip naked whilst they dragged our knees across the street.
"I packed it in at that point, went down to a local club instead and just played there."
Another wrote about the pressure to go drinking every week adding: "I'm at a different university this year but had a few disappointing experiences last year.
"I play rugby so went along to training in the second week or whatever, thinking it'd be quite professional and serious because they were in the top division but that wasn't the case. They hassled you to go to the 'socials' every week, saying that it was compulsory and we had an initiation as well that was disgraceful.
"It really annoyed me because that's not what rugby is about. Why should playing sport mean you have to go to every single social and be hassled for not?"
Many universities have looked to ban official initiations but many still take place under the guise of "welcome drinks".
Last month Chris Hemmings wrote in the Mirror about when he was a student being involved in disgraceful rugby club antics at university which involved urinating on women and throwing drinks in their faces.
He said: "For the first 12 months, and for reasons I still can’t bring myself to understand, I allowed my actions to be determined by the will of 40 men who all happened to have been at the university slightly longer than me.
"From then on my first year came to be nothing more than a constant battle to prove how macho I really was."
Have you be involved in a university sports club initiation? Let us know what happened by emailing steve.myall@mirror.co.uk