Both rugby and hockey are violent games. The saying “Give Blood—Play Rugby” was put on bumper stickers in 1975. The saying “Give Blood—Play Hockey” has been on bumper stickers and T-shirts since at least 1990.
 
Other sayings about hockey violence include “I you can’t beat ‘em, beat ‘em up” and “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.”
 
 
Give Blood Play Hockey
About Give Blood Play Hockey:
To: The Hockey Community
From: Mary Quayle – Founder of the Give Blood Play Hockey Charity Tournament.
Subject: The 2011 Tournament – Our 5th Year!
Date: Friday, July 15, 2011
It has been five years since we started the Give Blood Play Hockey Charity In-Line Tournament. Since then we have raised over $130,000 for Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), we’ve collected nearly 600 pints of blood and we have watched cancer patients’ miraculous and sometimes heart wrenching journey as they battle this horrible disease. My name is Mary Quayle and I’m the founder of Give Blood Play Hockey. 
       
9 July 1975, Traverse City (MI) Record-Eagle, “Rugby fans to have day” by John Davis, pg. 61, col.1:
TRAVERSE CITY—The bumper stickers say “give blood—play rugby.”
 
17 July 1975, Press-Courier (Oxnard, CA), pg. 20, col. 1 ad:   
GIVE BLOOD—PLAY RUGBY
NEW OXNARD RUGBY TEAM NEEDS PLAYERS
   
3 October 1975, Omaha (NE) World-Herald, pg. 6, col. 1:
Rough Sport
DISTRICT Judge John Burke saw a rugby contest in Aspen, Colo., and came away convinced that sport has to be the world’s roughest—at least the way he saw it played.
(...)
The judge said cars of the area display bumper stickers urging: “Give blood—play rugby.”
 
24 May 1990, Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, pg. 14G, col. 5:
BUMPER STICKING…Spotted on a BMW with a Hawken School sticker, another sticker which says, “Give Blood, Play Hockey!”
 
30 September 1993, Pittsburgh (PA) Post-Gazette, “Nip in the breeze signals time for a sweat shirt,” pg. C2:
Polly is especially fond of the T-shirts, which are over-sized with roomy sleeves and emblazoned with the names of bars from Down Under, baseball teams from days gone by and offbeat sports sayings such as: “Give Blood. Play Hockey.”
     
12 January 1997, Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT), “Critical need for blood donations”:
A popular T-shirt emblazoned with a Red Cross symbol pronounces in jest, “Give blood. Play hockey.’’
 
Google Books
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
Edited by Tom Pendergast
Detroit, MI: St. James Press
2000
Pg. 486:
Perhaps an oft-seen bumper sticker best defines the sport’s absurdly rugged appeal: “Give Blood. Play Hockey.”
 
7 June 2003, Anchorage (AK) Daily News, “It’s a seriously healthy tournament” by Matt Nevala, pg. C6:
There’s an old T-shirt that reads ‘‘Give blood. Play hockey.’‘