Rugby

Rugby. 

Who's heard of it? 

I admit I have heard of it. I knew it was a ball game played in the UK. But I had no idea how it was played - in fact, have never even seen any part of a rugby game before. Not even when I was a wee child in England.

Before this weekend, that is.  And we had the opportunity to watch a game, right here in Thurso! In fact, practically in our own back yard. 


There is a field across the street and down a wee bit where they play rugby and football (soccer, for you Americans). The cover of the program shows an arial view of the field.

The weather had been nasty and miserable all week - raining and windy ALL week. Thankfully it cleared up on Saturday just in time for us to walk down the street to the field. There, we found an empty space along the fence and stood.

We  had borrowed some fold up chairs from our friends and brought them along to sit on. Ha! No sitting!

Not even any bleachers. 

Now we know. 

Now, here is a men's sporting game I think I could actually enjoy watching. And here is why. 

It was fun to watch. 
There is a lot of action. 
There are no time outs every 20 seconds. 
And an hour-long game does not take 3 hours to play. 

The ball keeps moving. Even when it touches the ground, someone scoops it up and keeps on moving it down and around the field. It can even change hands and go from one team to the other and the game does not stop.

Actually, I really am not quite sure what constitutes a stoppage. Except when  the ball goes out of bounds. 

So, knowing nothing about the game, we went. We watched. And we enjoyed. 

We meant to do some research before we went, so that we would understand the basics, but we forgot to do that. And I honestly did not do any research after the game, either, as it turns out.  


So, I will describe for you what I saw and experienced. If you are a rugby enthusiast, you may want to skip this description. It may be painful for you. Although you might enjoy the pictures.

The game seems to be a mixture of American football, some soccer, and a wee bit of basketball. There are large goals at each end of the field, like football goals. There are referees. 

There are like 13 players on the field. I heard at one point that one side gets an extra player. Not sure what that means or who gets it and/or what part of the game. You might look that up, if you need to know. 

So, to start the ball in play, about half of each team is grouped together. The rest of the team is spread out across the field waiting for the ball to come their way. 

The members who are huddled together seem to be in layers. The inside layer stand side by side with their arms wrapped around the man beside them. The outside layer sort of lays over and into the inside layer, wrapping their arms around the man in front and beside them, and sometimes grabbing around the thighs of the man in front of him.  They are a tight bunch. 

At first, each team is all scrunched together with a space between them. Then a signal is given and the ends of the front layer grab each other and the whole group sort of goes head to head. Then another signal is given and they all start pushing. Sort of a reverse tug of war. The whole team is trying to push the other team?  Not really sure here.  (Mike tells me this is called The Scrum.) (I'm not sure how he knows this because he didn't research the game beforehand, either.)

But then there is a team member who is not in that huddle who has the ball. 

Some time after the teams start pushing in on each other, he tosses the ball into the center of the huddle.

The ball rolls on the ground inside the huddle, and the men - all mushed into this great mass of bodies - move the ball around with their feet. I think each team is trying to get possession of the ball and the idea is to move the ball outside the mass to a team member who is on the outside. 

As soon as the ball is within reach of this outside player, he picks it up. And from there, things really move!  The men in the scrum break up and everyone is running around the field, following the ball, which is being thrown from man to man and sometimes even being drop-kicked across the field. 

Often a man is tackled and dropped to the ground. Many bodies then land on top of him. And you would think that would be the end of it. But wait - there's more!  Often, somehow, the ball gets released and tossed either to a teammate or sometimes just into the open space, where another player scoops it up and begins to run and pass it all over the field!  I told you this was exciting stuff!

Like I said before, other than the ball going out of bounds, I am not sure what stops play on the ball. Well, actually, blood stops the game. Whenever someone was down (and there always seemed to be some blood involved when that happened), the game came to a stop until he either jumped up and joined back in or he was removed from the field to lay on the ground at the sidelines. 

When a player crosses the goal line, 5 points are scored.  Then they have the opportunity to kick for an extra 2 points. However, unlike American football, where the ball is placed in the middle of the field for the kicker to kick straight through the goal posts, the ball is actually placed directly out from where it crossed the goal line. So, most of the time, kickers were kicking at extreme angles to the goal posts! And they actually kicked it through the posts! I think that must take a lot of skill!

So, a really funny part to me - which is why I say it is a little like basketball - is when the ball is returned to play after going out of bounds. The player tosses it back into the field - supposedly to his own players - but each team picks up a player by the legs and holds him in the air to try to touch the ball or push the ball away from the other team.  Not completely sure here. Why does that make me think of basketball, you ask? Well, it makes me think of the tip-off when they start the play. You know, where the ball is tossed into the air and the centers jump to tip the ball. 

(I thought I had learned how to insert a video clip. But now it doesn't play and I cannot seem to remove it. Too bad. It was a short clip of the picture above)

After about an hour or so, I asked, "how do you  know how much time is left in the game?"  (there is no countdown clock on the field) and the answer was, "There is one person who knows. The referee." And about 5 minutes later, the game was suddenly over. 

So, we experienced our first rugby game. I enjoyed it. I will admit that if the weather had been like yesterday - VERY blustery and raining - I would not have been so keen to watch it. And we would have missed this fun experience. 

Rain is one thing - in fact, it might have made the game even more interesting to watch them play in rain and mud and slickery fields - but I just could not do both rain AND wind. 

Part of enjoying any sporting event has to be the food, don't you think? Rugby is no exception. As I walked over to take a picture of the scoreboard, I noticed people coming out of the building - with food. So, I ventured in and came out with a sausage roll. Yum.  Will need another one of those sometime. 

Not only are they yummy, but I learned that they are not meant to be shared. 1. They taste too good and 2. they are made with flaky pastry, so they sort of get destroyed when you try to tear them apart.   

It looks like the season has just begun, so maybe we will venture out to watch another game.

Speaking of sports - we were out for a walk one evening about a month ago when we came across the lawn bowling competition. Yep. Lawn bowling. 

That happened to be the end of the season, but the indoor version is getting started....

Now THAT's a sport I could participate in!

The following items were printed in the program - thought you might enjoy reading them. I LOVE the way Scottish people talk!  You will understand what I mean as you read these - their choice of words and expressions are fantastic!

And for those of you who persevered to the very end, I have an extra special picture to share with you.
Now, you must remember that the driver would be sitting on this side of the vehicle, so you would see an actual head through the window. 

 Enjoy!