American Football vs Rugby..Which Sport Is More Brutal????

bamaslaw

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Jan 16, 2005
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And to those in the know, what are the differences between rugby and Australian rules football?

And I also recall several schools bringing in rugby players for punters, IIRC, Hawaii had one when we played them, had an absolute cannon for a leg.
Aussie Rules is a completely different game than rugby or football. In Aussie rules there is no offsides, you score by kicking and not running the ball over an end line, and you have to do something with the ball every 10 meters, whether it's a dribble (it's hard), a handpass (similar to a underhand volleyball serve) or a kick (the preferred method). There's other vast differences between the two games, but really, they're two entirely different games.

And there's really no good way to explain what Aussie Rules is. As the recruiting officer for the local Atlanta club team, it was very difficult. People would ask you what Aussie Rules is, and you'd say "It's kind of a mix between football, basketball, and soccer". You'd see them think about it for a second and go "I'm sorry, what?"
 

DrollTide

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Oct 18, 2008
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Rugby Union is a rough game although it tends to not have the collisions that football has. It is not a "game of inches" like football and there really is no need to stop a guy dead.

Players are taught "rugby tackles" which amounts to a hip tackle and then sliding down to strangle the legs. If you can fight your way through the stiff-arm you can bring down a guy of any size with this technique. However, the big guys are usually in the scrum rather than out in the open field.

At the highest levels, where big rewards are at stake, I imagine it is a lot rougher than say a high school or local match.
 

TitleWave

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Dec 3, 2012
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And there's really no good way to explain what Aussie Rules is. As the recruiting officer for the local Atlanta club team, it was very difficult. People would ask you what Aussie Rules is, and you'd say "It's kind of a mix between football, basketball, and soccer". You'd see them think about it for a second and go "I'm sorry, what?"
Just be thankful you weren't tabbed as the local recruiting officer for kabaddi...
 

CHATTBRIT

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Dec 3, 2003
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Rugby and its not even close. I lived I the UK in the 70s and it was insane. A friend of mine - a girl - is at Ga Tech and got a concussion in a game two years ago at the intramural level. She has still not recovered.
Of course, it's rugger. When I first saw American Football I called it "sissy rugby" because of all the pads and helmets. Rugger players wear a jock strap, period. Some have been known to wear a harness on their heads to protect their ears from being torn off in the scrum.

FYI, there are two types of rugby -- Rugby Union (15 players per side) which includes loose scrums and throw ins from the sideline and Rugby League (13 players) which is played mostly in the North of England and employs a hybrid of American Football with downs. In the scrum there is biting, eye gouging, etc. My brother played Rugby Union and came home bloodied each Saturday.

Rugby is also a very social game in that the teams go to the clubhouse after the game and imbide huge amounts of beer while singing the bawdiest songs you can imagine. I've seen quite a bit of the World Rugby Sevens being played which is a much more open game than when full sides play.
 

TideMan09

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Jan 17, 2009
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I met a Rugby Player at the Kirklin Clinic at UAB last year during one of my visits there..And the Rugby Player literally had the biggest thighs I've ever seen on a human, bigger than any American Football player I've ever seen..After reading your post I understand why now..
Rugby Union is a rough game although it tends to not have the collisions that football has. It is not a "game of inches" like football and there really is no need to stop a guy dead.

Players are taught "rugby tackles" which amounts to a hip tackle and then sliding down to strangle the legs. If you can fight your way through the stiff-arm you can bring down a guy of any size with this technique. However, the big guys are usually in the scrum rather than out in the open field.

At the highest levels, where big rewards are at stake, I imagine it is a lot rougher than say a high school or local match.
 

TideEngineer08

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Jun 9, 2009
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Consider that when American football was still in its infancy it was still essentially rugby and President Roosevelt (Theodore) very nearly had it banned due to the violence and deaths.

Rugby is constant violence, without pads. While football does have more high velocity hits, its still set plays that last seconds at a time with breaks in between and the players are fully padded.
 

bamadp

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Sep 24, 2006
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Yep. And there is very little, to none, time off between plays. It's like a constant HUNH except the defense has an equal chance.
Yea, I think most American football fans don't realize how little of the 60 minutes is spent actually "playing the game". From the time the ball is snapped until it's blown dead (when a team can actually score points) is probably around 25 minutes. The other 35 is spent watching players get up off piles, walking back to the LOS, huddling, etc.. And between coaches TO's, tv TO's, intermissions, etc. it takes three hours to watch that!

American football and American tv go hand in hand. TV can stop the game to show a commercial. How does tv handle non-stop games like rugby?
 

chattabama12

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Oct 22, 2008
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Having played rugby for 13 years I can say that, without a doubt, football is a much more brutal sport. The numerous stops of play in football allow for bigger, faster, and stronger players to be competitive at every level...You're just not gonna see that kind of size and speed in a human that has to compete at a high level for 80 consecutive mins. Combine that with hard plastics and soft tissue and you have much more potential for "brutal" play. I really love both sports...but the hits I gave/took as a high school football player were way more brutal than those that I have been a part of in rugby.
 

bamaslammer

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Having played rugby for 13 years I can say that, without a doubt, football is a much more brutal sport. The numerous stops of play in football allow for bigger, faster, and stronger players to be competitive at every level...You're just not gonna see that kind of size and speed in a human that has to compete at a high level for 80 consecutive mins. Combine that with hard plastics and soft tissue and you have much more potential for "brutal" play. I really love both sports...but the hits I gave/took as a high school football player were way more brutal than those that I have been a part of in rugby.
Haloti Ngata was a rugby player before he was a football player. he's just 6' 4" 330 lbs. How big do you consider big
 

TideEngineer08

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Yea, I think most American football fans don't realize how little of the 60 minutes is spent actually "playing the game". From the time the ball is snapped until it's blown dead (when a team can actually score points) is probably around 25 minutes. The other 35 is spent watching players get up off piles, walking back to the LOS, huddling, etc.. And between coaches TO's, tv TO's, intermissions, etc. it takes three hours to watch that!

American football and American tv go hand in hand. TV can stop the game to show a commercial. How does tv handle non-stop games like rugby?
I remember reading in Coach Bryant's biography that he had figured out the amount of time actual game play took up during a football game was less than 10 minutes. Plays usually lasted 5 or 6 seconds, then teams usually ran the clock down before they snapped, meaning 20 to 30 seconds ran off the clock before another snap.

I'm sure it's different nowadays with the advent of the hurry up style offenses, though some of those do still run the play clock down before actually snapping the ball.
 

TommyMac

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Football is played by much better athletes, they're bigger, stronger and faster to the extent that without the pads and helmets, rosters would be decimated at the end of practically every game. The human body is just not capable of withstanding collisions for an entire game between players of such size and speed. I realize that not every play involves a 300 pound man and a 4.5 40 guy, but there, but there;s a good mix of the two.
 

fundytide

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Oct 22, 1999
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Hockey might be more brutal than both. Ice as hard as concrete, razor sharp skates, sticks firing frozen rubber pucks at 100mph, high speed collisions against boards/walls. And that's not even factoring in the fistfights.

I'm not a hockey fan but it is a bloodsport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5xkMNIt-5k

I won't post links here, but if you have the stomach for it, you can look at YouTube videos of bloody hockey injuries. Scary.
 

Mamacalled

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My stepfather it'd an ex rugby player from New Zealand. Both sorts are very physical but I would go with rugby because of the constant play.
 

Mamacalled

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Football is played by much better athletes, they're bigger, stronger and faster to the extent that without the pads and helmets, rosters would be decimated at the end of practically every game. The human body is just not capable of withstanding collisions for an entire game between players of such size and speed. I realize that not every play involves a 300 pound man and a 4.5 40 guy, but there, but there;s a good mix of the two.
I disagree with this. The only place that football players are bigger is the linemen and they make very few full speed tackles.
 

bamachile

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I played intramural rugby (8-man) the second semester of my freshman (plebe) year at USNA. It was a lot rougher than I thought, but I loved it. I knocked my jaw out of place in a diving tackle (which was illegal - you're not supposed to leave your feet) and had TMJ and issues with my jaw locking up for years, but no significant injuries.

By way of comparison, the constant running requires a different sort of athleticism in rugby, much like that required of early two-way American footballers. I don't think you can justify a "better athletes" statement for either.
 

bamaslammer

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I think you guys are a little off subject with the better athlete discussion. You really can't compare the two because they are trained to do very different things. Football as others have noted is all about short bursts of power and speed. Rugby is a constantly moving sport and great speed is useless if you can't keep it up. Most guys that played for Alabama when I did were former football players and it took a while to adjust your body for the difference.

One of our better players was actually a swimmer who'd used up his eligibility. We had one guy from Australia who had grown up playing the sport, he had legit 4.4 speed and could punt while running with EITHER foot. Our team captain was one of the toughest and best athletes I'd seen at any level. He was about 6 foot, around 240 and could run down the most fleet footed of guys. He'd punish them when he caught them too. Then there was "Big Mike". I just don't have time to describe him, but you didn't want to .... him off. It was a great adventure to be sure. Being a Rugger forever changes you.
 

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