f13.net

Spike just picked up rights to broadcast the NRL playoffs and championship game about a month ago in the U.S.  Loving me some rugby and having played in college (White Dawgs!), I tuned in.

Right off the bat, I noticed those crazy aussies play by rules I'm not familiar with.  It's more a combination of soccer and American football, heavy on kicking and running, where the poor forwards are forced to go through the motions of scrum downs and line outs.  A quick internet search, and I realized I'm familiar with rugby union rules, and this is rugby league.... formerly relegated in mind to things I don't care about along with sevens.

It took me a couple weeks, but I have to say... I'm really enjoying it.  The first game was a blur as I tried to figure out what the fuck was going on, but the subsequent games (Parramatta vs. Gold Coast, Parramatta vs Bulldogs; I think) were wonderful.  I might have a slight mancrush on Jarryd Hayne.

Not nearly as smash-mouth as the rugby I'm used to, which is too bad.  Poor guys are relegated to running straight forward into the opposing side to try and clog things up and open up the outside for the prima donna linies. 

Can you tell I was a forward?

Hooker for Life!

And yeah, the game is quite a bit different from that I played in college.

Yeah, I got into NRL just recently and was totally confused when I started watching it, not knowing the difference between league and union rules. Then it just disappeared off of Setanta Sports and I lost track. I didn't know Spike had it. Do you know when they are playing the finals?

League rules remind me a lot more of American football than regular rubgy, with the very rigid set of phases (downs). I can never figure out why they bother with scrums, since I've yet to see someone win a scrum against the head. Still fun to watch.

No, sorry.  I'm assuming there's a bit of a delay between US broadcast an Aussie broadcast, and I'm trying to avoid spoilers. 


The scrum-downs are basically uncontested...  I think the scrum-half is feeding in the ball behind the props, so there's no chance for the opposing team to steal.  Line-outs seem to basically be unopposed as well.

The reason the rules seem odd is because NRL is rugby league, not rugby union.

What most people outside of Australia and England are familiar with is union.

I prefer union myself, as watching League reminds me too much of american style football with no fight for possession at the breakdown.

Australia also has in a professional union competition, the Super 14, with South African and New Zealand teams.


EDIT: This post was brought to you by the department of redundancy department. I has trouble reading. Somehow I skipped Haem's post entirely in my reading.

Heh.  I mentioned it was league and not union rules in my first post.

No game this past Friday on Spike?  I'm fucking confused about what the schedule is supposed to be on this.  Maybe they needed to make room for another all day block of CSI.

I -think- it was the final that was on today in the afternoon.

The final was on yesterday morning at 10 am Central time. I've Tivo'ed it but haven't watched it yet.

Grrr.  If that was the final, I missed it.