The Wonderful Game of Rugby!

These past weeks have rushed by as I’ve been hard at work attempting to remain afloat with all this school work weighing me down. No worries though, I’m still finding time to enjoy everything Sydney has to offer.

I went to my first Rugby Match! It was amazing. It was a retest of last year’s Australian Kangaroos vs. New Zealand Kiwis final match. So each team was made up of the best players from each country. The Kangaroos won,  but it was quite close and got pretty exciting at the end. Apparently there are two types of rugby. In this match each team had 5  chances to get to the other side and score. Whenever they got tackled by the other team, the men would regroup and begin again. So the tackles were quick and aggressive. Once the guy fell, they’d let him go and the game went on. It has less breaks than American football and is really brutal- the best kind of sport to watch, I think.  The New Zealand players were bigger than the Australians. If I was on the field I would definitely run the other way.
Australians play many different sports compared to the American array of baseball, football, and soccer. They are big on rugby, AFL (Australian football, completely different), cricket, and horse racing. Rugby and AFL have no pads, taking a heavy contact sport to another level entirely.

The New Zealand team started off with their chant before the game, which was exciting to see. It was just like in the movie Live Strong. It looks so funny when they do it, but it shows such cultural pride and I think it’s very cool.  Sadly I won’t make it to New Zealand this semester, but that just means that I’ll have to come back to visit.