A DUMMY’S GUIDE TO RUGBY
Even when you’re scoring it’s called a ‘try’ — like you could do better.
You’d think it would be easy to stop a man who’s running with a ball. But easy and uncomplicated just wouldn’t cut it for a sport like rugby. To the uninitiated rugby is pretty odd, near impossible to figure out really. There’s kicking and throwing and running, but you can’t throw forward while running, apparently this is syntax that makes complete sense to some.
Rugby resembles a mosh pit in parts, like when players ruck. Even the BBC News simply put a ruck down to “one of the more complex parts of rugby union”. In other parts, rugby has ballet’s elegance. Think those superb airlifts at line-outs and the choreography of rippling muscles forming a cascading line of bodies ready to receive a ball. Nice!
But what’s up with the odd names for different player positions like a tighthead prop and a flyhalf? There are also loose forwards, and that’s not a description for people desperately working the bar at 2am.
The rules of this game keep inviting questions like why do opposing teams randomly gather for a grumpy low huddle called a scrum? Experts will say the scrum is supposed to be about gaining possession to restart a game after stoppage — that’s when someone’s broken a rule or committed a foul (go figure, because there are a lot of rules to break in this game).
In the scrum the forwards (the big guys), get into formation and lock shoulders and arms. They look like they’re tiptoeing around the ball with footwork from River
Dance while gripping on for dear life with their upper bodies.
Something secret happens in that circle of butts in the air and straining thighs. Then seconds later the ball pops out like an egg popping out of a chicken, ready to be grabbed by the scrumhalf so that another attack can begin. On the ball though, why is it even called a ball, when the 30 people playing on the field are throwing around a squished egg-shaped thing?
Devotees will tell you the aim of rugby is about competing for territory, getting past opponents by sheer force or speed and surviving the crush of muscle in a tackle to get the ball grounded into the opponent’s in-goal area, the tryline. If you’ve got that far and you score it’s worth five points. In rugby though, even when you’re scoring it’s called a “try” — like you could do better. And you actually can, by “converting your try”. That’s sending the ball far and high towards the posts, which are the H-shaped 16m-high goalpost with a crossbar at the 3m mark. You can go for a drop goal at any time during the match too if you manage to dodge being slammed to the ground.
But tackles have rules, so no above the neck tackles. Breaking a rule results in a penalty adjudicated by the referee who will give your opponent an advantage because you haven’t played nice. If the infraction is serious the ref could give a player a yellow card and send him or her off the field to the sin bin for 10 minutes.
If a player is given a red card it’s the end of the match for that player and the team plays with one person down.
The players will keep this up for 40 minutes before breaking for 10 minutes, swopping sides and going at it again for another 40 minutes till the final whistle blows and the side with the highest points wins.
That’s rugby in a nutshell, sort of. But rugby enjoyment is more than its strange rules and complex technicalities. Its magnetism lies in the gladiatorial nature of a game that’s been around in its current form since the late 1880s but has modern verve and global reach.
It’s fast-paced, high adrenaline stuff and mixes strategy, skill and teamwork with raw physicality and grunt power. And the players don’t fall down on the ground and cry half the time, clutching their ankles like babies. Now how could a sports fan possibly resist?
Go figure, because there are a lot of rules to break in this game