On October 9th, 2009, the International Olympic Committee finally voted for Ruby to be included in the Olympic Games again. 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Rugby will be played, 92 years after the last time at the Olympic Games in France in 1924. Way back then the US won Gold (just like at the games in 1920), which did not go down well with the French audience, seeing its team defeated. The following ruckus on the pitch did not help the sport at all and it was removed from the Olympics.
Now Rugby is off to a new start. Even though only Sevens will be played, which might sadden some hard-core fans, for a spectator sport this probably is a good choice. Of course there will be male and female teams – a big difference to 92 years ago. Women teams today are not rare at all and they do exceedingly well.
Maybe even a few of the young women on these teams I watched two weekends ago will be in Rio at the Olympics. Plus my favorite female referee, I hope!
Did you get my funny rugby photo? I emailed it to you.
Yes, I did – thank you. That are the New Zealand All Blacks, doing their Haka (which they always do before a game). We have a team here with a lot of Samoans and other islanders – they do the same and it is always quite impressive.
But violence to scare NFL players? Who ever came up with that does not know much about Rugby. 🙂
Well, think about it. The NFL players get to wear helmets and all sorts of padding, and the kicker and quarterback practically have a force field around them – there are so many penalties for “touching” them. Rugby players just go at it, no pads, no helmets. Of course, I’m guessing there aren’t too many 6’6″, 325 lb. rugby players, though. Padding or no, it would have to ouch to be tackled by someone that size.
And that exactly is the difference – Rugby players don’t wear amour and are in constant contact, therefor they have to have the technique down to not get hurt. If you go here
http://www.usarugby.org/media/EDocs/IsRugbySafeForYouth.pdf
you can read up on the paradox that Rugby is safer due to the lack of amour and some quite amazing numbers about the incidence of injuries in Rugby and American football. You will probably do a double take!
Professional Rugby players run up to 6’9″ or so, but because the big guys have to run around as much as the little guys (and basically everybody is running all the time), they could not carry around 325 lbs. Probably the biggest would be 275 lbs. or so.
Well, that was certainly enlightening. I wonder how rugby stacks up against soccer for injuries. Most soccer injuries are knee injuries, concussions, and broken wrists, I think. Mainly, the knee injuries though. We felt very fortunate that Nicole never had a knee injury. Because of the pivoting involved, most knee injuries in soccer are torn ACL injuries. Nicole did have a broken wrist (more common in goal keepers than field players), but never a concussion. She did, however, give an opposing player a concussion. Or rather, the girl gave herself a concussion when she tried to go over Nicole’s back to head a ball and smacked her head into the back of Nicole’s head. Nicole didn’t even know she’d injured the poor girl. After the whistles stopped play, she turned around and asked “What happened to her?” Talk about hard-headed! She was a very sturdy player.
You are right in your assessment – injuries to the lower extremities are most common. I tried to find some numbers to compare soccer re. rugby injuries, but did not find any, sorry.
As you mentioned the concussion – William broke his nose once when he was still playing soccer; he tried to head a ball and smashed into the skull of the other guy going for the ball. Ouch.