upstater1
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I enjoy a good scrum as much as the next guy, but I've got to admit, the way you wrote your post...ahhh, an awful lot of colorful tradition there!
As an aside, my father went over to Ireland in the late 60s and told me about these rugby players. Said they were all built like middle linebackers. Since I was a kid then, that only added to the game's mystique.
What are injuries like in this sport?
Inuries are not as bad as in football, but when they do happen, they are usually very bad because of the awkward positions you can get yourself in when you're constantly pushing against all those bodies.
Consider this: in football, one guy gets the ball, his teammates block, and the other team comes at him full speed. Without blocking in rugby, the key is to move the ball quickly from back to back until you see an opening you can pop. This means defenders can't take a full speed run at a ball carrier because he probably won't even have the ball by the time they get there. So, tackles aren't as hard. We took a team to Scotland one year and we hit those guys very very hard, all of them were smaller than us, most of us had played varsity football. They killed us on the scoreboard. We were just hitting them hard after the ball was out, and while they were lying on the ground, their teammates were scoring tries. It's a different game in that sense. A lot of fluid movement, not much in terms of hard hitting. Here's an injury our scrumhalf suffered: severed nerve in the arm, left arm paralyzed. Ever hear of that one in football? I haven't.