"Soccer is a gentleman's game played by ruffians, Rugby is a ruffians game played by gentlemen, Football (American) is a ruffians game played by ruffians..."
Cliches apart, Rugby is truly a gentlemens game. Having played, watched and studied this game, I now of the camaraderie within the game. Players, coaches, even refs will be at each others throats during the game and sharing a beer right after - in a refined manner of course ;-).
While in the US, i found it hard to find good rugby to watch on TV, but this changed at INSEAD. Getting a chance to play full contact rugby with a bunch of huge britishers, aussies and kiwis was a great challenge. Ok - I lied, the kiwi was pretty small actually, but the rest were big. One of the aussies was a coach and taught us non-rugby pros the skills of taking a bigger dude off his feet. The sheer joy of skillfully hitting someone and taking over the football is awesome!
Now, why am I reminiscing on these days past? I discovered Australia Network on TV and they have live rugby every weekend. Things only got better when I saw them showing live All Blacks rugby - yummy!!! Those kiwis and their ability to incessantly hit people, their intimidating haka upfront, and the flair of their pass-work are all things of beauty. The weekends are looking way up...for me at least.
The only downside is the risk of some collateral damage - watch out guys at work, I may line you up a good hit and then invoke the two golden rules of office life:
Rule#1: The boss is always right
Rule #2: If the boss is wrong, refer to rule #1. So, yeeeeeehaw!!!
Final shot: For those of you doubters out there, wondering when the f%^& did this dude dream that he actually played rugby, these 3 pics are for you. All my stories arent made up, after all :)
I just knocked the stuffing outta that brit:
Drinks for the winners:
Scoring the winning try of our first round game of beach rugby in Singapore:
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