A spirited debate over the merits of rugby vs. American vs. Canadian football should never wallow in the comments.
Take it away
Harebell:
Rugby
Bigger field
More opponents to overcome
Only breaks are for injuries and penalties
40 minutes non-stop
Limited substitutions
Progressing the ball is achieved via the foot or by passing it in any direction other than forward and carrying it.
The defence is the offence and vice versa.
Protective gear limited to a weird set of ear muffs, an extra thick woolly pullover and the smell of last nights 15 pints and a vindaloo on your breath. Not to mention sandpaper like stubble.
The kicker plays the entire game.
Kickers can actually kick a moving ball accurately
Kicks are taken from where the ball was when the kick was awarded.
Kickers can position their own ball prior to kicking and don't need someone to hold it for them.
A touch down involves actually touching the ball down.
Players benches consist of just that - a bench. No heaters, no oxygen, no cheerleaders, no medical staff other than a guy in a flat cap who has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and carries a sponge bag with a sponge in it and a small amount of water collected from a puddle.
Coaches communicate by screaming from the side lines, not via radio or that sign language thing.
There is one referee and two guys who couldn't run away quickly enough to maintain control.
Football
Narrow field
Armour
5:1 rest to work ratio when you are actually involved in play.
Each team is made of two complete teams that split the time between them depending on which way they are going.
Some teams have a third team that takes even more playing time away from the other two teams and comes on once every 5 minutes or so to catch or kick the ball.
Kickers get to rest all game and are not made to kick to win after having been bludgeoned for 79 minutes by guys twice their mass.
Heaters/air conditioners by the bench.
A village with all the amenities including a hospital and a small ambulance called the bench.
Money, TV contracts, gyms and fitness facilities most cities would envy.
Fugle?
The only people who give a shit about rugby in Canada are (a) immigrants from rugby playing countries or (b) people who were not good enough to make their high school's football team and have spent the rest of their life convincing themselves that a game no one plays here is actually better. These people are also hipsters, are ugly, and are not athletic. Thus, they exaggerate and are not to be listened to in any circumstance.
Any response Harebell?
Most white folk in Canada are from rugby playing countries.
Most folk who play rugby do so outside of high school because it wasn't offered in high school. but that is changing.
The rest of the world plays rugby, field hockey, soccer and cricket. The minority in terms of sport are the N Americans for whom the euphemism "World Champions" means N American champions, because the sports that they play are marginal and that is a very complimentary way of putting it.
Retorts, both jejune and futile, Fugle?
This reminds me of a situation where a bunch of guys go out for drinks, order beers, and one guy gets the house red. The wine guy goes on and on about how in lots of other places wine is had by men in social situations and how people should realize that wine is the superior drink for the hanging-out male because they do it like that in other countries. What this wine drinking person fails to realize is that this isn't southern Italy, and the insults follow.
Enjoying fringe things and trying to make it seem like they are superior is a mark of being out of touch. I submit that if rugby were superior to football, we'd all be playing it and/or caring about the results of university level games.
Harebell?
Ah so Fugle it is all a matter of the size of the pond you find yourself in. In the large pond where the world is the world and world champions are indeed world champions that phrase means something. Using the same phrase "World Champions" to describe the most successful team in a smaller theatre of operations is somewhat disingenuous.In fact this behaviour could be construed as, "Enjoying fringe things and trying to make it seem like they are superior."
I guess if you can't win at something that everyone else does then you just invent something of your own and declare yourself world champions.
Oh and as for caring:
Canada made it through to the knock out stages of the Rugby World Cup where they were beaten by the eventual winners and hosts this year. How did Canada's international football team do against other nations?
oh yeah that's right, Canadian Football is a kind of masturbatory exercise for its fans, no-one else needed.
Karnak the Anonymous Concern Troll?
Canadians get through life by clinging to a series of delusions:
1) Canada is an important country on the world stage.
2) Canadians are good at things.
3) As a small population country we should expect that we would supply 2/3 of the professional athletes if the rest of the world cared about the sport (e.g. ice hockey).
Russell Peters did a great job explaining why soccer/football cannot be the world's sport if INdia and China with most of the world's population don't play. He has a point.
So with rugby, and cricket (which is worse than rugby), it is played in countries settled by northern europeans back a couple of centuries. The game is most popular in places like Wales, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa... oh and Tonga and Samoa. For these countries rugby is for them what ice hockey is to Canada. A niche within which they can self-proclaim their importance. Hell, CFL football is the funniest one of all. We picked our own rules to avoid competing head to head with americans. But then Aus, NZ, UK all pick different economic systems, different technology standards, different railway gauges to avoid being part of anything bigger. Sorry, they even drive on the wrong side of the road.
So it is kind of pointless to discuss what sport is better since we have all been raised to believe that whatever we grew up doing must be the best sport. As part of our xenophobic british empire heritage, we have been raised to ridicule anything that is different from what we define as the best.
I will say that when I was in Wales in september I read a lot about rugby in the news and I watched some world cup games. Some were interesting and others not so much. A 6-3 score in rugby is not an indication of much happening other than scrums and groping.
I will say that if Canada had managed to "medal" at the rugby world cup, we would embrace the sport as our own just as we did with trampoline, synchro diving, ski-cross, moguls and speed skating following short lived olympic success. We just give up trying to win anything in track and field or sports that the rest of the world takes seriously. When we do import a Jamaician to win medals he gets caught cheating.
Good stuff all around.
I am going to agree with Fugle that the problem with rugby in North America, is that the best athletes aren't playing it. It's like curling. All the top talent is playing hockey, or basketball, or football.
As for armour, you don't need as much when you are playing a contact sport like rugby. Football is a collision sport. The tackling that happens in football can only happen due to, and as a result of, the type of protective equipment. Take off the helmets and the game changes by necessity. And we can't ignore the fact that rugby players are more and more armoured all the time.
This stuff looks like football gear from the 20s. I suppose the evolution is inevitable; they'll soon be covered in gear from head to balls, with only a rule book to tell them apart from their NFL cousins.
