What, exactly, Mr. Bloggy-pants are you talking about?
Why the semi-finals of this year's Rugby World Cup being held in New Zealand. The Kiwis are the hometeam here, and favored as well. Much pressure, like with Sidney Crosby and the Canadian hockey team at the Vancouver Olympics last year.
Today saw two semi-final games: France beat Wales in the first to gain admittance to the final. The second saw a brutal match up between bitter rivals: the All Blacks of New Zealand and the Wallabies of Australia.
The Wallabies are considered one of the world's best teams, and earlier in the tournament beat another country whose team is considered one of the big three in international rugby: the Springboks. I'm intentionally using the nicknames for these international teams because I think they're cool. I don't exactly know what a "springbok" is, but I do know that it represents any international team from South Africa. (Just looked it up: a springbok is an African antelope.)
The current Big Three in international rugby are the Wallabies, the Springboks, and...the All Blacks. The Aussies ran into a motivated and hungry rival, and lost.
I got off work and after popping a beer at home noticed that I could watch the game live on my free weird sports channel, and caught the entire second half of the match.
Two things I'm not sure of: the day and time of the final between New Zealand and France; and some of the basic rules of the game of union rugby.
Watching the forty minute second half gave me some knowledge of kinda what's going on, but not everything. I don't know why the crowd goes a certain kindof crazy at certain whistles--I mean I understand something good happened for NZ, but what exactly?
Also, I learned that it's apparently okay to pick someone up and body slam them into the ground. Repeatedly. With virtual impunity. Out of bounds body slamming is okay-dokey as well.
I thought American football was weird. Both rugby and American football were born from the same proto-ovalball-football sport in England, and the similarities are obvious after a while of paying attention. But the differences glare.
They don't wear pads in rugby. And with body slamming apparently kosher, what you get are two teams basically kicking each other's ass for eighty minutes with an oval-ball bouncing between them; two gangs brawling for eighty minutes.
Two gangs brawling for eighty minutes?
Since my involvement with the Hercules/Xena folks, I've been aware of Rugby. But I don't understand all the rules, I saw the Matt Damon movie about South Africa and thought, I'd enjoy the movie a bit more if I understood the rules of the game. I do however deeply admire the folks who play the game... it's brutal.
ReplyDeleteI do understand Rugby better than Cricket.. that game is totally beyond my ability to comprehend.