Overview of Rugby and Football

            Ever wonder about the relationship between football and rugby? For starters, football requires a lot more padding than rugby. Also, rugby is a nonstop game with no breaks (unless there's a timeout). While football has a stop between each play. There are many other details to each of these two sports that make them different but at the same time alike. Their differences, however, cause rugby to be a tougher sport. The sport rugby came first. It was invented by a man named William Ellis in 1823 (Rugby History, 2012). He was playing a game of soccer and instead of kicking the ball he ran to the endzone, disobeying the rules of soccer and starting the new sport rugby. According to the Etibicoke Invictus Rugby Club (2014), the game of rugby is a combination of dynamic flow and tough physical contact. In which the speed is like soccer but the physical contact of the game is worse than soccer. There are a lot of expectations from the athletes who play rugby. The athletes must be fast and have the ability to keep up with the tempo of the game. They also must have strength and stamina so that they can last throughout the whole game. Players must be able to have the endurance to play the whole game due to the fact that there are limited substitutions (Conjecture Corporation, 2014). In playing the game, players must have sure-handed ball movement and steadfast tackling. What makes this sport difficult is that they can only play with a mouth guard. Unfortunately, there are little to no pads worn in this sport (Olson, 2009). When a point is scored it's called a try. A try is worth 5 points. In scoring a try, the ball has to touch the ground in the endzone. To get the ball down the field players can either make forward passes, backward passes, or by kicking the ball towards their endzone. When starting the play, the "quarterback" must kick the ball, there is no forward pass (McDonald, 2011). All of these qualities sets rugby apart from football.