Can you believe I've been here eleven and a half months? Unbelievable. What's even more unbelievable, is that during those eleven and a half months I had never seen a rugby match.
How un-kiwi of me.
You see, rugby is to New Zealanders what hockey is to Canadians; it's basically a religion, and I am a bit of a convert.
I've never understood why soccer is such a big deal in most of the world. I think The Simpsons summed my feelings up rather well: "High kicking! Low Scoring! And ties? You betcha!!" Not to mention the ridiculous fake dives some of the players take to try and get penalties awarded to the other team (tossers).
And North American football? Gag me.
Now rugby, on the other hand...wow. These guys are as hard as nails. They head out there with nothing but a cup, a pair of (tight!) shorts and a (tight!) t-shirt to protect their gorgeous manliness (you really must check out their thighs. And torsos. They're a sight to behold. Here, let me help. And again! and since I'm so generous, another! And if you're inclined towards the lads, I strongly suggest you google "hot men rugby" Yowsa!) Phew! Where was I? Ah yes. So these scantilly clad, well-shaped men get knocked around, pulled to the ground, tackled mercilessly, and jumped on. If one of them gets hurt, more often than not, he'll wipe away the blood, pop his broken nose back into place, and head straight back out onto the field. Hard. As. Nails.
I won't pretend I understand all the nitty gritty details of the game, but essentially the goal is to get the ball over the line at your end of the field and touch it to the ground (so you can't just carry it over, or fall over onto your back holding the ball, the ball has to make firm and direct contact with the earth) to score 5 points (they call that a "try"). To get it there, players can pass the ball to each other, but only to players behind them. They can kick the ball forward, but I think there's some rule about when you can or can't kick it (offside rule, I presume). You can also get 3 points through penalty kicks and simply kicking the ball through the goal posts (that kind of look like the ones used in N.A. football).
So all that to say, I like rugby, and up until last week, I had yet to see a match. When Dave suggested we head on down to Invercargill, NZ's Southernmost city, to catch a Ranfurlly Shield match between the Southland Stags and Taranaki, I very happily agreed.
It was really great to see. Unfortunately for the hometown crowd (and Dave) the Stags lost the match 12-15, and not a single try was scored all match. So not the most exciting game in terms of runs or action, but still fantastic. There are some pictures on Dave's camera, but I don't have it with me, so you'll have to go without for now. I'll try and post them in the coming days!
*For the uninitiated, those first four words of the title of this post are how a rugby scrum gets going.
The players huddle together in an organized mass, facing the oposing team. The ref tells them to "Crouch", they do so. He tells them to "touch", which basically means the guys on the outer sides of the front line jab the oposing player in the arm (apparently, this is to prove that the players are in fact supporting their own body weight and not leaning on the others...not sure how it does though.)
Then there's the very brief "Pause" portion of the scrum which, again, serves to prove the players aren't leaning forward too much. Finally, we get the all important "Engage!" where the players surge forward with a big, meaty, muscly, grunty crunch into the players in front of them. Somehow, a ball gets thrown into the middle of this mess and comes out on one of the two sides, thus determining who has posession of it.
Wow. Explaining that (and likely explaining it wrong) took about ten times as long as the actual process.
No comments:
Post a Comment