Wai Sallas enlightens us on the sport of Rugby.
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A month ago, we led off this column by turning to luminaries such as Abbott and Costello, George Carlin, and an anonymous blogger to help explain the complex simplicity of baseball. The following week, we leaned on a classic Disney ‘Sports Goofy’ cartoon to learn all about football. Last week, Jason Sudeikis, The Simpsons, and The Minions helped to explain the beautiful game of soccer.
And now – finally – we go international. We’re taking on rugby, a sport with deep connections to, well, other sports.
The sport of rugby, however, is far from ubiquitous. Not even Bo Knows rugby.
So here we go:
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In 1823, at Rugby School, students had begun a spirited game of football (soccer), when William Webb Ellis “with fine disregard for the rules of football, first took the ball in his arms and ran with it, thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game.”
Over the years, many sports have taken facets of rugby to help make their game better. However, there is no game quite like Rugby.
As mentioned above, rugby was the brainchild of someone who was…bored. But make no mistake; the two games – soccer and rugby – couldn’t be any different. A hard-hitting game like rugby has no place for flopping:
Basketball’s inventor, James Naismith was an avid rugby player. The first hockey game was played by Canadian rugby players looking for something to do in the winter. As we know from watching Friends, the distinctive tip-off in basketball and face-off in hockey both find their origins in “the scrum”:
It’s true, American sports like football and basketball may have more of a following, but for me, rugby is second to none. And now a brief word from our sponsors:
Rugby, give it a try…
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So…you got it?
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(Photo Credit: YouTube/screen capture)