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dear dude in dr zikers anthro class

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David_Dovey:
I don't know much about the rules of either game (enough to follow if I'm watching, not much more) so I don't know if there's anything helping there, but I'd say the main thing is the lack of hyper-specialisation in rugby. Everybody on the team has to be able to run hard for a long time, so you don't get 300-pound gorillas who exist solely to plow dudes into the ground.

SirJuggles:
As much as I generally agree with you (and don't know a ton about rugby)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WciQVqEc8r0&feature=related

Some of those hits are apparently similar in feeling to running into a brick wall which is running back at you.

Liz:

--- Quote from: David_Dovey on 19 Nov 2010, 16:02 ---I'd take an anthropology class if it wasn't so BORING

--- End quote ---

I will fight you. And I will win.

StaedlerMars:
In rugby there's a lot of technique that goes into how to hit people safely, for yourself, while in football it's about getting the other guy to the ground. There's also a lot more scrumming and such which looks intense but is basically just pushing into other guys. I think the ball is actually in play for a total of 20 minutes during a 60 minute game or something like that? The rest it's on the ground while a scrum is happening. That's 20 minutes of running, during which a real tackles only happen once in a while.

Alex C:
Staedler and Dovey have it right. As I've mentioned before in the Sports thread, the difference really lies in the blocking. The blocking rules changes everything and makes the NFL game as much about raw mass and power as it is about coordination and quickness. As Dovey already pointed out, it leads to specialization. When half the game is about pushing eachother down, it can pay to have huge men on the field. It is a virtual lock that at any given time half of the men on the playing field will weigh in excess of 240 pounds. Anyone under 210 is considered undersized even at the "small" positions. The sheer momentum involved can lead to a helluva lot of injuries. And more than anything else, any player on the field can expect contact whether or not they are a ball carrier, so the sheer volume of hits on a given play significantly ups the potential for injury.

Here's an example. A defensive player gets hit so hard that the announcers don't bother talking about the ball carrier, a man who is hit by at least 2 people and is subsequently piled on.



--- Quote from: SirJuggles on 19 Nov 2010, 16:52 ---As much as I generally agree with you (and don't know a ton about rugby)...
Some of those hits are apparently similar in feeling to running into a brick wall which is running back at you.

--- End quote ---

I don't mean to sound like a pig-headed American here, but a lot of those aren't as nasty as they look. Most of those were wrap ups-- the tackler slows down, opens his hips, and redirects the ball carrier, causing him to lose balance or lifts him off the ground. They can definitely hurt, especially without pads. But it's not as painful as when you get stopped with sheer momentum. In the NFL, for better or worse, you get more stuff like many of the hits seen here, in which the players do not make contact with their arms first or otherwise redirect prior to full contact. They just meet shoulder to chest and both get dropped like they'd been shot. Maximum energy transfer. When a guy hits you so hard that you leave the ground and continue to fly backwards through the air, it can really hurt like hell, pads or no pads.

Anyway, with that said, rugby is a rugged sport. After all, despite the rules and tackling style those shoulder-meets-chest plays that are so common in the NFL still happen in rugby, and when they do there's nothing there to mitigate it but a shirt. From what I've seen, however, those hits do not happen at the same frequency as in grid iron. Combine that with the difference in blocking rules and the size issue and I kinda have to laugh when people imply that the NFL is really any less dangerous to play.

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