[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I just saw some rugby on tv! USA playiing Argentina in some cup semifinal game. It was only highlights, but still cool. Now they're showing England and S. Africa. I'm not sure what kind of rugby it is.

I just found out that the last two times Rugby was in the olympics, the USA won gold. Odd.

I wish we didn't have to pit these two great sports against each other. Everyone has their preferences of course, but let's just agree that both are tough sports that none of us could play at the highest level.

[HoosierDaddy]

Maybe the olympic's rule out professional rugby players the way they used to with basketball?

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

HoosierDaddy, on Feb 22 2009, 02:57 PM, said:

Maybe the olympic's rule out professional rugby players the way they used to with basketball?

Maybe. It was about 90 years ago, so who knows. I guess back then we were playing old-school football, which had a lot more similarities to Rugby, so maybe USA would be better back then. Or something.

[HoosierDaddy]

The knowledge that rugby hasn't been included in the Olympics since the 1920's would have helped me in hypothesizing, RLY.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

HoosierDaddy, on Feb 22 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

The knowledge that rugby hasn't been included in the Olympics since the 1920's would have helped me in hypothesizing, RLY.

Your wiki-fu is strong, young one. Tell a man a random fact and feed his brain for a moment, but lead him to wiki and google and feed his brain for like, 20 minutes or so.



So I've though of a great analogy between Rugby and Football and checkers and chess. Rugby is more like checkers, fast paced, well-rounded pieces, less developed strategy (not a knock on rugby, but the nature of the games allows for more stategery in football than rugby). Football is more like chess, with specialized pieces, and more strategy and thought between moves. (If you don't believe that intricate strategy is at least as important to football as the physical aspect, you don't understand the game.)

[frookenhauer]

Padded Nancies!

[Slow Ben]

Mindless Ogres!


Nice analogy by the way RLY.

This post has been edited by Slow Ben: 23 February 2009 - 01:27 AM

[Shinrei]

As elected moderator of this thread, I demand that you refer to Rug Baby by its proper name: Grabass.

[frookenhauer]

Grabass Rocks!...Hold on...get it? ...Wat?

[Gothos]

NFL chess? I guess you could say that. the 2 games share inflexibility and expendability of the pieces. let's just not get over our heads and compare NFL players to chess players. they're the chess pieces, and the player is an army of people working behind the scenes.
just to say anyway. is that player whose only role in life is to kick the ball from one single position, a real athlete? is that guy whose only meaning of life is speartackling at a precisely indicated point a real athlete?
hard to say.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Gothos, on Feb 23 2009, 02:11 AM, said:

NFL chess? I guess you could say that. the 2 games share inflexibility and expendability of the pieces. let's just not get over our heads and compare NFL players to chess players. they're the chess pieces, and the player is an army of people working behind the scenes.
just to say anyway. is that player whose only role in life is to kick the ball from one single position, a real athlete? is that guy whose only meaning of life is speartackling at a precisely indicated point a real athlete?
hard to say.

I'm not saying all nfl players are like chessplayers. The brains start with the coach, although players with a high intelligence for the game can make a big difference.

Oh, and speartackling is illegal. And tackles never happen at a precisely indicated point, defense doesn't know where the ball is going. And most kickers do both kickoffs and fieldgoals. You won't fiind me defending the toughnness of kickers though, half of those guys are euro soccer types.

[Cougar]

I think RLY may have been watching the rugby 7s, I saw USA get to the Semis of the US leg of the world 7s tour the other day and they were thrilling games.

[Slow Ben]

Gothos, on Feb 23 2009, 04:11 AM, said:

NFL chess? I guess you could say that. the 2 games share inflexibility and expendability of the pieces.

So, basically your saying you dont know anything about real football?

Stick to grabass!

[frookenhauer]

Its not football...its hand egg!

[Macros]

hmmm, I recall Johny W was being chased by some nfl team to play as kicker for them.
He obviously said no

[Binder of Demons]

It seems in recent years there's been a trend of looking at Aussie Rules guys to be punters, rather than rugby guys.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Cougar, on Feb 23 2009, 03:17 AM, said:

I think RLY may have been watching the rugby 7s, I saw USA get to the Semis of the US leg of the world 7s tour the other day and they were thrilling games.

I think that was it. Good stuff. I guess the americans had a respectable performance despite the elimination.

There's a trend now with punting where instead of remaining stationary, the punter rolls out to the side and does a rugby style kick. While the distance and form suffers, some of those balls are hard to return. If this keeps up, a lot more rugby guys will be crossing over.

[masan's saddle]

Raymond Luxury Yacht, on Feb 23 2009, 07:29 PM, said:

Cougar, on Feb 23 2009, 03:17 AM, said:

I think RLY may have been watching the rugby 7s, I saw USA get to the Semis of the US leg of the world 7s tour the other day and they were thrilling games.

I think that was it. Good stuff. I guess the americans had a respectable performance despite the elimination.

There's a trend now with punting where instead of remaining stationary, the punter rolls out to the side and does a rugby style kick. While the distance and form suffers, some of those balls are hard to return. If this keeps up, a lot more rugby guys will be crossing over.

There is a bit of history of rugby players switching to hand egg. I remember Paul Thorburn of Wales kicked off one of those games that the NFL brought over to the UK in the late 80's, on the back of the popularity of Walter Payton/ The Fridge/Mike Ditka's(?? not sure about the coaches name) all conquering Bears team. The previous season Thorburn had made a 60 metre penalty for Wales, and they tried to tempt his magic boot over to handegg. He made one kick, said " is that all I have to do?, bit boring really".

I also seem to remember Martin Offiah playing wide receiver for someone, might have been The London Broncos where lots of ex-rugby players ply their trade.

The one they all wanted was Jonah Lomu, 6 ft 5", 18 stone badass who could do the 100 metres in about 10.9 seconds, at one point the best player in the world without doubt.

Didn't happen.

[Slow Ben]

Yeah, with the explosion of guys like Devin Hester, Josh Cribbs, and other returners, punters who can do the rugby style to limit the return are going to be popular.

so i was wrong i guess their is a position in football rugby players are smart/tough enough to play.

This post has been edited by Slow Ben: 23 February 2009 - 08:16 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

Rugby style punting is not coming to the NFL. The protection for it is not suitable to the NFL, so they'd get blocked or tackled far too often.