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It just gets better and better... tape a bow 'Sizzling Shane' Williams :)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Km2VARzN4DU&feature=user
EDIT: little description for anyone who can't access the video link
It's from today's Wales v Ireland rugby match. Wales's mercurial winger Shane Williams runs through four Irish players to score a crucial try - he literally just runs through them, only one gets a hand to him and the contact was shrugged off... with his 10 minute spell as an emergency scrum-half, it just shows what a national treasure he is :)
Comments
It was a good try
but they should have scored two more! Let's hope they get it perfect for next week!
Angharad
Angharad
They've improved with each game
I'm currently watching it on the BBC iPlayer... I took some of my Indian colleagues out to watch it in my local, where they got to see me at my screaming, cursing, demented best :)
Next week's going to be a big one, can France regain their form when faced by 70,000 Welsh fans in the Millennium Stadium cauldron... Shane and Vincent Clerc on the same pitch is going to be a treat tho.
what thee heck?!
why tham socker guys playin football?
Indeed they are
rugby football, of which gridiron is but a pale imitation.
It's like American Football
Only without that pansy-padding crap, fewer rules against beating the snot out of the opponents (and some in favor of it) and a LOT fewer teeth.
Think, Hockey meets American Football minus padding.
Then you'll have the VAGUEST idea of Rugby.
Confession
"Roger Ustinov" was me, being a jerk, pertending ta be ignerint. It's a name I accidently entered & wound up with, trying to- never mind it's a long uninteresting story.
But I DID actually think that for a second, until I got a good look at the ball they were using, and I had to laugh at my ignerince. Then again I'm not too knowledgeable of American football either ..... Has anyone ever pitted NFL players (sans the armor) in a rugby match against top rugby players? Would be interesting to see how they fared...
~~~hugs, LAIKA
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
It was tried
many years ago. The rugby players won the rugby game, the NFL players won the 'merican rules game. Proved nothing. As for padding, I notice some of the rugby players seem to be wearing shoulder pads - so 1990's!
Angharad 8)
Angharad
Rugby - Football
I recall a story of a group of college American ex-Football players who decided to take up rugby around 25 years ago. They played it for maybe a year or so, and decide to enter a major tournament. The first time they met a good European side, they lost badly, but the Europeans said that they had never been tackled as hard in their lives.
I've never heard of a Rugby player playing American Football, but an Australian Rules Football player did play in the NFL and said on Aussie TV that American Football was much faster.
Rugby and American football are just two different sports. The rules are so different: offsides, kicking on the run, scrums, etc, gives rugby an entirely different look and feel.
Rugby is a more or less constant game with on the move strategy. American football is a series of strategic blocking patterns, sprints and furious, brief bursts of power. It is always played at top speed, unlike rugby, and the nature of the game, with its free-roving defenses (which basically eliminates the wild lateraling that is so prevalent in rugby), the forward pass, and the requirement to advance the ball or lose it makes for harder tackling (sorry, rugby fans, but it's true).
The best American male athletes generally go into football, basketball, and baseball. Soccer is somewhere around number four, and Rugby, although the US isn't terrible, as it qualifies regularly for the Rugby World Cup, is not even on the radar of most American athletes. Considering that Wales is so small, yet have a world-class rugby team, I have no doubt at all that if the talent that normally takes up American Football took up rugby, and were trained properly, they could easily be world beaters. The problem is, for American rugby players, as it is for American soccer players, is finding a decent level of competition to increase one's skills.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Keith Jarrett
Was a Welsh international who ended up playing NFL as a kicker. In his debut as an international rugby player he beat England on his own, scoring 19 points. I think he went to the US via rugby league.
Angharad
Angharad
No e's not
Keith Jarrett is a somewhat famous jazz pianist.
Kristina
They ran out of names...
...around 1974. How else could Timothy Leary be both a blithering 1960's LSD guru
and a professional baseball player? Or Graham Green both a brilliant British
novelist and a Native American actor? That's my theory anyway...
~~~Laika
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Good Luck Wales!
Hope you win that little trophy.
Every one's up in arms in this part of the world, because the third Bledisloe Cup game (if there is one) will be played in Hong Kong. Personally I think it unlikely. I have to gloomily say the Kiwis are better than us this year, and I think they have every chance of winning the first two games.
I hope some of you are coming this way for the International Rugby Sevens, the last weekend in March. It's always a great occasion.
Joanne
P.S. Roger, you're a terrible shit-stirrer.
Rugby v. Football (Not Futball)
One of the most convoluted sports discussions I ever had was about rugby (Australian Rules) and football with an Aussie - as I got to know him I realized that he was anti-football because it was from America (a different issue entirely), but he could not seem to understand that they were different sports. I don't know how common this misunderstanding is, but there it is....
My understanding is that in the States rugby and football were pretty much the same up until about the 1920's - but the game was an upper class sport (played mostly at colleges, which at that time were really only attended by the elite of society). Right about that time a player, or coach, I forget which, realized that the American rules allowed for a forward pass, and it's evolution has divulged from rugby's ever since.
Rugby is still popular on college campuses, among both males and females (more males), but it's not organized and is mostly peripheral to campus life.....
He conquers who endures. ~ Persius
Six footballs
Up until the 1860s or so, every college (and prep school/public school) on both sides of the Atlantic (and Australia, too) pretty much had their own rules for football. Some colleges played a kicking only game like Cambridge, some played a running game like Rugby. When colleges played each other, they had a meeting to decide which rules to use.
There were also football clubs for players not in school and out of a group of those using common rules, Association football (soccer) was invented.
Years later, in the UK, Rugby became the accepted name for the running game and Rugby League (which allowed pro players) and Rugby Union (which did not) got organized, playing under slightly different rules that got more different as time went on.
Around the same time, in the US and Canada, someone invented the line of scrimmage, an idea that spread fast. This made American and Canadian football a different animal from rugby. Many colleges started using the set of rules agreed on by four of the Ivy League schools in the US or by two schools in Toronto in Canada. Other schools adopted one of the rugby codes from England or played Association-style football. In Australia, Aussie rules developed, though some schools used Association rules or one of the rugby codes from England. Ireland had its version of football, too, some say more ancient than any other.
By 1900, at least six different versions of football were being played, though the American and Canadian games were so alike you could easily choose to use one or the other. President Teddy Roosevelt, appalled at football injuries and deaths, forced some rule changes on the Ivy League, including the use of padding and helmets. Canadian schools adopted those changes, too, in order to be able to play American teams.
In the 1920s, some say in a game between Toronto and Harvard, the forward pass got invented because the rules agreed on before the game (to settle the differences between Canadian and American rules) neglected to make it illegal, apparently. Canadian and American rules are still so similar that players fairly commonly switch from one to the other.
- Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Forward Passing in Football
Forward passing in (American) football was legal as early as the mid-1910's, possibly earlier. When the Rose Bowl became an annual event on New Year's Day in 1916, with Washington State playing the Ivy League's Brown University, both teams threw passes, though more of them were intercepted (three of five) than completed (one). The first Rose Bowl touchdown pass came a year later, one of 27 attempts by the victorious Oregon team.
I don't believe passing had been illegal, exactly, before that -- just very restricted. You had to be way behind the line of scrimmage, throw the ball only to certain areas -- the field was cross-hatched back then, the reason it was called a gridiron -- and you suffered a 15-yard penalty along with the loss of the down if the ball wasn't caught. (I'm doing this part from memory -- a visit to the College Football Hall of Fame about 20 years ago when it was near Cleveland, and an article I wrote but can't locate about local college football back in 1969 -- so I may not have the details exactly right. But the Rose Bowl information (out of media guides and the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia) seems solid.)
Eric
Australian Rules Football
It's not rugby of any kind, and it's not football. Its closest relative is Gaelic Football, which is played with a round ball, But Aussie Rules is played with an ovoid ball. Both kicking and handball passing is allowed. Passes can go in all directions, but how do you describe a game in a few sentences? It moves and is played by guys wearing no armour, sleeveless jerseys and tight sexy little shorts. Aussie Rules players have occasionally been sought by Gridiron teams for their ability to throw a ball long distances. It's a great game to watch and has been making great strides in Australia at the expense of both Rugby codes.
each to their own
It's hard to be objective about something you love, but for me American Football and Rugby League are tactically thin when compared to Rugby Union. Sure they have their athleticism, but the variety of play in Union (set piece v broken play, tight v loose, kicking v running) just adds another dimension. No team can achieve total domination of all phases, so you see tactical variations in club and international rugby, based in part on the players available, and the 'ethos' of the team - the variations can produce wonderful contrasts in style.
If Rugby Union has a problem it's that its merits can be difficult to appreciate if you aren't a committed fan, or a player. Perhaps too, its traditions can appear impenetrable, but after 130 years it's picked up quite a few... the national anthems and supporters songs (and tribal challenges from the south seas islands), wonderful anachronisms like the Barbarians (a scratch teams committed to open rugby), the British Lions tours of the Antipodes, bonhomie of supporters (especially when compared to soccer), and many other things... sorry, it's too hard to be objective :)