Rugby ?????

[Maya]

After watching my football teams, I came across a rugby match and decided to watch it. Here's what I took from the game..

1. I don't know what the hell is going on.
2. What the hell IS going?
3. Uhhhhhh.....?????????
4. Some of the guys are hot.


Yeah, so..can anyone give me some insight into Rugby?

[Holeypaladin]

It's a running clock, so there's no downs. The ball can only be thrown backwards or to the side, never forwards. And points are scored field goal style.

That's... the gist of it, I suppose.

[Maya]

So the point of intertwining arms like a spider web ..the scrum?..where they're repeatedly told to go higher while everyone is bent over and nearly touching the ground means what? And when does the lifting upwards of a player come about?

It's fascinatingly complicated.

[Blazing Falcons]

It's like American Football but with more violence. /guy that knows nothing about sports but saw a movie once.

[Catharijne]

Rugby!

It actually is a pretty complicated sport and there are two principal kinds of rugby. Union and League. Union is the more popular around the world is basically the national sport in countries like my own, South Africa.

As pointed out the ball can only be thrown backward or sideways. Basically what happens is the offensive team forms a big line until they can pass the ball enough times to break a hole in the defense. You can never, ever throw the ball forward, but it can be kicked forward.

Here's the arm thing - Whenever you get a penalty for something the game goes into a restart, and you get a lot of options but it depends on what the penalty was. A scrum is all about strength so you form human battering rams, it's 8 players and it's a little chaotic. The ball is on the ground between the two teams and they're vying for control

The lifting thing - You can only hit the player who is currently holding the ball, and tackling the carrier is what stops an attack. A successful tackle means wrapping your arms around your opponent to bring them to the ground. Okay so the carrier goes down, the other team wants to take possession of the ball, one way of doing this forming the ruck, which is when arms are locked by players above the ball. The tackled player basically has to release the ball, and a player on your team is behind the ruck trying to grab it when it's visible.

Hope that helps - several months later.

[Crazywolf]

I've never really followed Rugby much myself so I can't really add much more to what was said already. Compared with soccer I just find it a bit predictable, whereas most soccer games hang in the balance til the last minute with most rugby games you can usually see after two thirds of the match that one team is so far ahead they won't lose.

[Catharijne]

1996 RWC - Springboks vs. All Blacks.

Down to the wire.

[exanimus]

Basically the entire Six Nations just gone too, with the exception of most of the matches against Italy... Poor Italy!

Nail biting stuff!