We’re almost to the end of the first week of November which traditionally means baseball is at least a week and more like two weeks in the rearview mirror. Unfortunately, because of the postseason schedule (probably more on this later), the season ended on the 4th of November. Nevertheless, congratulations to the Yankees and Phillies on a (mostly) well played series, and to Hideki Matsui, who took home the World Series MVP award with absolutely stunning numbers.
However, this post (my first in a very long while) is a bit of a tangent. The other thing that November usually signifies is the BCS picture is beginning to clear and in the absence of clarity, debates over who deserves what are heating up.
Again, this is not going to be the subject of this post. On December 11th of this year, Invictus will open in theaters, starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. The movie will tell the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which was hosted by South Africa, and the host team eventually went on to victory.
This movie piqued my interest because rugby is not a terribly popular sport in the United States but the final of the Rugby World Cup in 2007 (also won by South Africa) set the world record for largest viewership of any sporting event, ever. So in honor of this movie coming out in just over a month, this post will be dedicated to the great sport of rugby, basic rules, how it differs from one of America’s greatest obsessions (football), and why it may even be better than said obsession.
To make a broad sweeping generalization, rugby is what you would get if you combined soccer and football. More to the point, rugby exists after soccer and before football on the evolutionary scale of these particular sports. To the layperson, rugby is little more than chaos but in truth, it is far more organized than most people give it credit for. The perfect example is the use of the word “scrum” by commentators and sportscasters in America. Invariably, when they use the word scrum it is to describe a melee where there is a free-for-all in an attempt to acquire the ball, whether it is used to describe a loose ball in basketball or a fumble in football. This might lead one to believe that there is little or no organization or structure in a rugby scrum, which is entirely false. The scrum is, in fact, the most structured and most closely monitored aspect of any rugby match, as the scrum poses the largest risk of a serious injury to one of the players.
First of all, there are 15 players per side and traditionally, the starters wear the number of their position. For instance, #1 is the loose head prop and the starter at that position usually wears number 1. The rest of the positions are as follows:
#2 – Hooker
#3 – Tight Head Prop
#4 – Lock
#5 – Lock
#6 – Breakaway
#7 – Breakaway
#8 – 8-man
#9 – Scrum Half
#10 – Fly Half
#11 – Inside Center
#12 – Outside Center
#13 – Wing
#14 – Wing
#15 – Fullback
Positions 1-9 are the ones involved in the scrums and with the exception of the scrum half, they are called forwards. Positions 9-15 are called backs. If you were to draw a football analogy, the forwards are akin to the offensive and defensive linemen while the backs are more of the speedy players, wide receivers and running backs. However, to say that forwards can’t handle the ball well is a big mistake and oftentimes, they are instrumental in whether or not a team wins or loses.
Scoring
Scoring in rugby is similar to football. A “try” is worth five points and a player gets a try by placing the ball down in the try-zone (or end zone, if you prefer). You physically must “touch down” the ball to get these points and the play is not over until you control the ball to the ground (spiking the ball in the try zone before touching the ball to the ground would be a bad idea…).
Like in football there is a conversion attempt after a try. The twist is that you must kick the ball laterally from where the ball was placed down. For instance, if the ball was put down directly in the middle of the field, the kick must be taken from the middle of the field. Likewise, if the ball is placed down one yard from the sideline, the kick must be taken one yard from the sideline, and the kicker is allowed to move back as far as he wants. A conversion is worth 2 points.
When there is a penalty, you have two options. You can “kick to touch” or “kick for points”. Kick to touch involved kicking the ball out of bounds and will be covered later. If you are close to the uprights, you can try to kick for points. The other team is not allowed to attempt to block the kick and the kicker can take as long as he wants… and sometimes they take their sweet time. A kick is worth 3 points.
Lastly, there is a drop kick. If you are close enough to the goalposts, you may drop kick the ball through for 3 points. However, the ball must touch the ground before you kick it and this kick occurs in normal play so as you are lining up the kick, there’s probably a very large man attempting to take your head off. And don’t forget, there’s no blocking in rugby.
Advancing the Ball
Moving the ball forward in rugby is simple. You can run it forward and you can kick it forward. That is all. The former is simple enough. Run as far as you can before you get tackled. The latter is slightly more complicated.
Any player can punt the ball forward at any time. The main purpose of the punt is to move the ball from your defensive territory to your offensive territory. In rugby field position is much more important than in football because of the back and forth nature of the game, where rules of possession are much different. As far as punts are concerned, the rule of thumb is get behind the kicker. Once the ball is kicked, you either need to start behind the kicker or have the kicker pass you. Once this happens, the ball is live and whoever gets there first can take possession.
Sometimes the kick is simply utilized to clear the ball away from your defensive try zone but at others, it is used to take advantage of your momentum relative to the defender. Say, for instance, an offensive player is one on one out on the wing. He has a full head of steam going but the defender has the good angle of pursuit and is dug in and ready to make the tackle. If the wing is able to kick the ball over the defender’s head, just a few yards downfield, he can completely negate the good positioning. Firstly, and most importantly, you can’t hit a guy without the ball and as the kicker, your full momentum is going downfield while the defender is either standing still or is just starting to run downfield. Either way, the advantage is heavily in the offensive player’s favor, assuming a well placed and timed kick.
Many professional and international teams make heavy strategic use of the kicking game while at lower levels, not every team can find players who can kick the ball well. If done correctly, it can kill a defense’s will and if done improperly, it can lead to the other team scoring points in a hurry.
Penalties and officiating
One of the biggest differences between football and rugby, other than the pace of the game, is the way penalties are called. In football, penalties are called if they are seen, no matter the situation, no matter the down, no matter the distance. In rugby, this is not necessarily the case.
One of the most important jobs of the rugby referee is to keep the game moving. Penalties stop play. Now, if one player were to wind up and punch another player (from the other team, of course) play will stop and penalties and cards will be handed down. However, if a penalty occurs which is a minor penalty (offsides, for example) and the player that is committing the penalty is far away from the ball, the ref usually will not call it in the interest of keeping play moving. The football parallel of this would be something along the lines of an offensive player committing a holding penalty when the ball is all the way on the other side of the field. Yes, a penalty did occur, but it probably made no difference in the outcome of the play. In football, that would cost the offensive team 10 yards. In rugby, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Obviously, given a sport with as much contact as rugby, another job of the officials is to protect the players. Rules differ slightly depending on the level of rugby being played but referees will always put a stop to unsafe actions by any player that are outside the parameters of the game. Which brings us to the one aspect of rugby that can cause as much as two tons of human flesh and bone to go hurtling into each other…
What is the scrum?
There are certain penalties that call for a scrum but the most common cause of a scrum is when the ball gets tied up. The ball carrier is brought down and during the ruck (a contest for possession of the downed ball), several people collapse accidentally on top of the ball carrier and the tackler and nobody can extract the ball. It’s nobody’s fault, the play just died. Which brings us back to the scrum.
It begins with the forwards binding together into as tight a mass as they can. Their job, after the call of “engage” by the ref, is to stay as low and as tight together as they can. Losing even a single person out of 8 can cause a significant disadvantage.
The front row is where most of the action is since that is where one team actually engages the other. There are three players across the front row with two props flanking the hooker. The goal of the props is to (if possible) literally suspend the hooker so his feet are dangling beneath him. This isn’t always possible depending on your personnel but the hooker is the one player in the scrum who isn’t completely holding himself up. Behind those three in the second row composed of the two locks and on the outside of them, the two breakaways. The breakaways are usually some of the smaller forwards in the pack and are responsible for breaking out of the scrum quickly when the ball comes out. The locks are the main pushing force for each team and immediately behind them is the 8-man, the last man in the scrum.
When the ref calls for the two teams to engage, you can usually hear guttural sounds almost exclusively reserved for animals doing battle on the Discovery Channel. Once the initial contact has occurred and the scrum is fairly stable, both teams begin pushing in earnest in an attempt to drive the other team back. It is around that time that the aptly named scrum half introduces the ball to the scrum. He is supposed to roll the ball directly between the two sides on the ground. At that point, the hooker attempts to “hook” the ball towards his side of the scrum (no, he’s not morally promiscuous). The ball works its way back to the breakaway or the 8-man and one of two things can happen. Either the breakaway or 8-man can let go of the scrum, pick up the ball and start running, or they can control the ball with their feet until the scrum half comes back and picks it up. The advantage to the latter is there is no limit to how far you can drive your opponents and as long as the ball stays within the feet of your team, you can keep moving forward. It is possible to drive the other team the length of the field, all the way into their try zone, and then the 8-man can let go of the locks and fall on the ball for a try.
The moral of this story is this; scrums are very structured and very closely monitored by the refs. Risky behavior is punished and scrums are sometimes restarted three or four times because the initial contact wasn’t stable enough to maintain.
Rugby vs. Football
When it comes down to the difference between rugby and football, it is very much a case of to each his own. In football, you play offense or defense and within those teams, you have a very specialized skill set and job description. In rugby, substitutions are rare and at the highest level, they only happen because of injury or there is a substitution at halftime where one guy plays the first half and the other plays the second. The result of that is every player plays both offense and defense. Sooner or later, every player will handle the ball. Some guys run straight at the opponent, three yards and a cloud of dust, while others are the world class sprinter types that attempt to outrun their opponent.
The largest difference I’ve noticed in playing and watching both sports is the tackling. In rugby, you have to control a player to the ground. If you trip the ball carrier and he takes two more steps before falling to the ground, he’s going to get up and keep running. Because of this, tackling in rugby is very fundamentally sound. You have to get low, wrap up your opponent, and bring him to the ground. In football, you simply have to knock him over and in this era of video highlights, the bigger the hit the better. That strategy would simply not work in rugby.
The other part of that is the padding that you wear in football and don’t wear in rugby. Because your head and shoulders are so well protected in football, defenders use these body parts as weapons to get the ball carrier to the ground. In rugby, your head is mostly unprotected and because of that, it is more or less the last body part you want to lead with when tackling. Taking an elbow to the head playing football isn’t that big a deal. The same in rugby can put you on a stretcher.
As to which is better, I very much enjoy watching both. Rugby is continuous like soccer so players don’t get breathers between plays and have to always be alert. For that reason I think it requires more awareness to play rugby than most positions in football. The bottom line is that the sports are too different in what they require from each position to make a direct comparison but both are very entertaining.
As we get closer and closer to late summer of 2011, I’ll probably put more on here in preparation from the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand and with any luck, I’ll be there. For the meantime, I hope this was informative and I hope that Invictus proves to be a good movie as well as a good representation of the grand sport of rugby.
I leave you tonight with one simple instruction: HUG A RUGGER!
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