Rugby has been a fun sport to learn about the past few weeks. Every time I say this, I nearly get lynched by any nearby rugby fans, but it really is quite similar to American football. It's actually quite interesting to see, like evolution, where the games branch off from each other. Rugby has touchdowns just like football, but they're called "tries," and you get 5 points for a try, plus 2 points for the extra kick. You can also score by having a penalty kick, where you get 3 points (this is the only form of scoring that occurred during the final game of the world cup... pretty lame). Also, there is an egg-shaped ball that people throw to each other. And you have to jump on the dude with the ball and beat the crap out of them - only with less padding in rugby. Actually, those are probably the only similarities... everything else is fairly different. One might say it's sort of a cross between football and soccer. But overall, it is quite a fun sport to watch - especially when you've got beer(s) in your hand(s).Oh, one other thing which I noticed [blogger warning: the following is complete speculation, and is not even supported by reference to Wikipedia or anything - believe at your own risk]. They don't have downs in rugby like they do in football, but every once in a while, the play stops (for reasons that I never really picked up in my short introduction to rugby) and they line up and wait for the ball to be thrown to them. This is called a scrum (pretty much whenever they all get in a big violent huddle with the other team, that's called a scrum, I think). Either I heard this somewhere, or completely made it up, but the line at which they wait for the ball is called the "line of scrummage." To me, this bore an obvious resemblance to football's "line of scrimmage," which is the line where a new down starts. I thought I was pretty clever for noticing this similarity, but the truth of my revelation remains to be seen, by anyone not too lazy to look it up.
2 comments:
I don't know nothin' about rugby. And I don't know nothin' about football. But it sounds fun!
Except England should have won.
(we have to be England fans until we move to Africa. Then we'll think about crossing over)
Alexgirl can talk about 'crossing over'... not going to happen.
Adam Brown told me that the final was only being shown in a few bars here and that the TV licensee would be collecting $20 at the door at every bar!!! Crazy shit. Needless to say I couldn't bring myself to watch the game. I saw a couple of SAians and an England fan later in the day and tried to judge who had won by the looks on their faces, except I guessed wrong because the English guy seemed pretty happy. I guess it was enough of a miracle to get to the final.
The England mascot is the lion. I'd like to see a real-life springbok try to bone a real-life lion, then we'd see who'd, er.... picked the toughest mascot.
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