Indian Rugby Thread ...

vishnureddy · Post by **vishnureddy** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 6:16 am

India beat Pakistan 52-15

Post by **Dhruv** » Sat Nov 01, 2003 2:25 pm

Well I was/am wathcing the World Cup of Rugby and India has a long long way to go before they can match even Nambia I am sure in this sport.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Sun Nov 02, 2003 6:36 pm

The problem with rugby in India is that very few people play the game. Only two schools in India played rugby regularly when I was in school in the 1960s. I am not sure if more schools play the game now. The La Martiniere College in Lucknow and Kolkata played each other annually during the Inter-Martiniere Meet, and we played the Old Boy's Association team. I heard recently that even the La Martiniere Colleges are planning to drop rugby.

Guess who else attended La Martiniere College in Kolkata for a few years? Leander Paes.

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Sun Nov 02, 2003 7:32 pm

is india in world cup?!?!?!?

Post by **Dhruv** » Sun Nov 02, 2003 11:22 pm

no they aren't. They'd get killed of they were.

gvhvhg · Post by **gvhvhg** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 12:07 am

thats what i thought

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 3:56 pm

gvhvhg, if India wins the bid for the 2010 Commonwealth Games you might see the Indian rugby team in action. Rugby is one of the five compulsary sports for the Commonwealth Games and as the host nation India would have to field a team.

Rohan · Post by **Rohan** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 6:26 pm

Nice sport to watch really
Can anyone explain the rules of this sport in finer details plz.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Mon Nov 03, 2003 9:46 pm

As someone who played rugby in high school (I was not good) I can give you some information about the way the game is played. If you know American Football (not soccer) then it is easier to explain rugby. Unlike American football you cannot pass the ball forward (you can lateral it or pass behind you), only the player with the ball can be tackled, the person scoring a touchdown gets to kick the extra point, you do not wear protective helmets or pads, and the game is continuous like soccer (no designed play sent in by the coach). It is a lot safer game than American football and IMHO it is more fun to watch it.

If you are not familiar with American football then try looking up the following website:

Rules of Rugby

Rugby can be played with 7, 10 or 15 players, and in the Commonwealth Games it is played with 7 players.

gvhvhg, since you are always curious about sports (and I admire that attitude), India is ranked 89th in the world in rugby.

Kumar · Post by **Kumar** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 5:05 am

Bhushan, I have caught Rugby on tv couple of times. I see a guy placing the ball behind him when he is tackled and his team mate picks the ball and run!!! How does it work?

What is TRY?

When do they turn the ball over to opponent? When a person is tackled?
too lazy to look up the rules on the web, so asking the expert.

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 6:10 am

Kumar, let me be very clear - I am NOT an expert in rugby. I played the game in high school and that's it.

"I see a guy placing the ball behind him when he is tackled and his team mate picks the ball and run!!! How does it work?"

When a player with the ball is tackled and brought down and the ball touches the ground, he has to pass the ball to his team mate.

"What is TRY?"

A"Try" is similar to a touchdown in American football except that the ball carrier has to ground the ball in the opponent's In-goal. The team gets 5 points for a Try (In American football a touchdown gets 6 points). The Try is followed by a goal (similar to extra-point being kicked in American football) and gets 2 points (usually one point in American football; sometimes two points depending if you kick the ball or run/pass).

"When do they turn the ball over to opponent? When a person is tackled?"

Rugby is continuous like soccer and unlike American football you do not get 4 tries to advance the ball 10 yards. The control of ball can go back and forth between the two teams.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 3:25 pm

Imho, Rugby should be ignored. It is basically a sport that is exclusive to the British Isles and their former white dominions, and was the sport most notorious for racism in the 1960s and 1970s (which is what gave it its initial notoriety). The French have dignified the game by playing it, but their team too is largely white (unlike the former WC-winning multi-hued French soccer team). It irritates me to hear Australians claim that the Rugby WC is the next largest sporting event after the Soccer World Cup. How absurd can you get? (My father recalls a sign outside the Australian embassy in London in 1958: "Immigrants Welcome: Whites Only"; that has historically been the spirit of rugby internationally too).

BSharma · Post by **BSharma** » Wed Nov 05, 2003 10:24 pm

PKBasu, it is absurd to ignore a sport just because it is “exclusive to the British Isles and their former white dominions, and was the sport most notorious for racism in the 1960s and 1970s”.

Cricket at one time was a game “exclusive to the British Isles and their former white dominions”. Did the Indians ignore it then? Would Indians be playing cricket now because at one time the white men and some of who were racists played it, and the Indians ignored it?

Golf was another game played exclusively by white men at one time. In fact, many golf clubs hosting the US PGA events did not allow nonwhites, women, and non-Christians including Jews to become members until Tiger Woods came into the picture. Should we have ignored golf many years back when it was played exclusively by the whites?

There was racism in baseball and American football until a few decades back, and some would argue that it still exists now. Should we ignore these sports?

Rugby is played in many countries and in fact some “non-white” nations like Fiji, Samoa, Tango, and Japan are playing in the Rugby World Cup. Playing rugby requires certain skills and is associated with more injuries than some other sports. Not many Indian parents in USA want their children to play American football because it is a rough and tough sport, and in India rugby is not looked at kindly by Indian parents for the same reason. Besides, it is played in few places in India so not too many people get a chance to play or watch it.

PKBasu, if you have problem with rugby then go ahead and criticize some of the racist people who you think are associated with this sport but don’t be critical of the game itself. Rugby is a great game and not everyone who plays it is a racist!

The Commonwealth Games was at one time limited to whites only, and now India is trying to host the Games. Just like racism in Commonwealth Games was corrected over a period of time, people should eliminate racism from every sport, whether it is rugby, golf, winter sports, or sailing. Ignoring a sport is not the solution.

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 5:21 am

Bhushan, cricket ceased to be a game exclusive to the British Isles and their former white dominions more than a hundred years ago; we ignored it then, while Rugby still has those characteristics today! And Ranjitsinhji was playing cricket for England throughout the 1890s. That is quite a bit different from the lily-white teams that dominate modern rugby (Fiji, Tonga, et al are nice appendages but never make the final stages; surely those tiny countries don't change the basic character of a game that is dominated by lily-white teams). The reason rugby has been publicised and promoted in the past two decades (mainly by the British press, with the Aussies joining in in recent years) is because the English (or British) are no longer any good at cricket (and have been pretty useless at tennis since Perry in the late-1930s, with the mild exception of Virginia Wade in the 1970s). You will notice that over the past 10 years about half the English cricket team comprises non-white players -- who always have greater difficulty retaining their place in the side than the whites. Classic examples of this include Ben Hollioake (an absolutely brilliant ODI all-rounder, whose mother is Balinese, and who hardly got the opportunities he deserved before dying in a road accident) and Alex Tudor (who was instrumental in two rare English test victories over Australia, but was cavalierly dropped soon after).

PKBasu · Post by **PKBasu** » Thu Nov 06, 2003 5:26 am

And besides, this is supposed to be an Indian Sports forum. What is the point of a thread that talks about a sport that India does not play with any seriousness?