It's the six nations rugby torunament for the next month or 2.
A round robin set of matches between: England, Ireland, scotland, Wales, France and Italy.
So I suspect most you will claim ancestry from at least one of the competing countries.
So what is rugby ?
Well think of it like a version of football where they don't wear pansified armour and every player has to stay on the field till he's carried off or substituted, none of this playing for 2 minutes then sitting down for a rest. Generally the only way to remove a rugby player through injury is to break a limb or knock him out. Blood injuries just get bandaged up - ears get strapped back on etc.
In fact, cross the man on man violence of hockey with the sheer impact of football (again without the sissy padding ;-) and then throw in the sheer end to end excitement of basketball and add the strategy and rule complexity of baseball and you've got rugby union.
It's alone with baseball as being the only sport where you'll find a skinny 5 foot six guy going up against a six foot seven 19 stone wall of muscle.
Only in rugby it's the little guys you have to watch out for - they're at testicle biting level for the brutes ;-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/7857218.stm
Despite being runners up in the world cup last year (yes a competition where MORE then one nation competed and called a world cup - even america had a team in it ;-) englands form is looking a bit dodgy and last years champs the welsh have started well by stuffing the french (always cause for celebration in the aardvark household whenever anyone beats france at anything - even the welsh)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=oG15tc07--s
everyone needs a daft song :-)
http://www.youtube.com/v/krDf1quYZnA&hl=en&fs=1
And a silly advert
http://www.youtube.com/v/1l46i4frrts&hl=en&fs=1
And a taster of the game :-)
(I tried the embedding video thing and for some reason it didn't work - yep I switched the editor mode off first - weird, worked this morning)
So take a look, grab a beer and have a look round your local cable stations or sports bars - 2 matches saturday and one sunday.
And england and wales saturday evening (gmt) so I'll either be expectantly dispondent sunday or chuffed to bits.
Oh yeah and ireland started well by stuffing the scots (who are with italy the weakest teams in the competition)
So it's shaping up to be a bloody good tournament, pull up a chair and prepare to be educated :-)
A round robin set of matches between: England, Ireland, scotland, Wales, France and Italy.
So I suspect most you will claim ancestry from at least one of the competing countries.
So what is rugby ?
Well think of it like a version of football where they don't wear pansified armour and every player has to stay on the field till he's carried off or substituted, none of this playing for 2 minutes then sitting down for a rest. Generally the only way to remove a rugby player through injury is to break a limb or knock him out. Blood injuries just get bandaged up - ears get strapped back on etc.
In fact, cross the man on man violence of hockey with the sheer impact of football (again without the sissy padding ;-) and then throw in the sheer end to end excitement of basketball and add the strategy and rule complexity of baseball and you've got rugby union.
It's alone with baseball as being the only sport where you'll find a skinny 5 foot six guy going up against a six foot seven 19 stone wall of muscle.
Only in rugby it's the little guys you have to watch out for - they're at testicle biting level for the brutes ;-)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/7857218.stm
Despite being runners up in the world cup last year (yes a competition where MORE then one nation competed and called a world cup - even america had a team in it ;-) englands form is looking a bit dodgy and last years champs the welsh have started well by stuffing the french (always cause for celebration in the aardvark household whenever anyone beats france at anything - even the welsh)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?hl=en&v=oG15tc07--s
everyone needs a daft song :-)
http://www.youtube.com/v/krDf1quYZnA&hl=en&fs=1
And a silly advert
http://www.youtube.com/v/1l46i4frrts&hl=en&fs=1
And a taster of the game :-)
(I tried the embedding video thing and for some reason it didn't work - yep I switched the editor mode off first - weird, worked this morning)
So take a look, grab a beer and have a look round your local cable stations or sports bars - 2 matches saturday and one sunday.
And england and wales saturday evening (gmt) so I'll either be expectantly dispondent sunday or chuffed to bits.
Oh yeah and ireland started well by stuffing the scots (who are with italy the weakest teams in the competition)
So it's shaping up to be a bloody good tournament, pull up a chair and prepare to be educated :-)
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