The six-month housemate

Rugby

[Parenthesis Chapter- if you are clueless when it comes to rugby :) ]

Extract from May 2014's edition of Extracurricular, a Parisian secondary school newspaper written by students.

Rugby for dummies

By Emma de la Tour

With the feminine rugby world cup coming up next summer and the men's rugby world cup coming up in September 2015, you'll hear more and more about rugby in the next few years. Let me introduce you to this sport, often outshone by football, but rising nevertheless.

"Rugby is a sport played by men with odd-shaped balls" -unknown

Basically, that says it all, but let's develop a bit.

Rugby, in its most popular form, is a sport played by two teams of fifteen players, with an oval-shaped ball, which, most of the time, is carried by the players. A game lasts 80 minutes, divided in two half-times (I'll let you do the maths). The pitch is 100m long: at each end are goal posts that consist in two vertical posts linked by a crossbar (perpendicular to them, 3m above the ground). The goal is to score as many points as possible, and to do so, you have three options:

1. Score a try: bring the ball to the other side of the pitch and touch it down behind the other team's try line. A try is worth 5 points, but once you've scored one, your team has the opportunity to score 2 additionnal points by converting the try, i.e. kick the ball above the crossbar, between the poles.

2. Score a penalty: following a foul, the referee can grant a penalty to the team which suffered the foul. In some cases, the penalty consists in shooting the ball above the crossbar, which is worth 3 points. The player has a limited amount of time to shoot the ball, during which the game is "on pause".

3. Score a drop goal: this consists in shooting the ball between the poles, while the game is going on (the players are running and passing the ball to each other). A drop goal is worth 3 points.

Unlike other sports, you can't throw the ball forwards in rugby; it needs to be passed to a player who is right behind you (and eventually is going to overtake you, to bring the ball closer to the try-line). You can also kick it forwards, but most of the time, a player from the opposite team will intercept it, so you're more likely to lose ground rather than gain some. To get the ball back from an opponent, you can either tackle him to the ground, which at least will stop his running, or, with a bit of luck, you could be able to intercept one of his passes.

Like in football, there are many different types of competitions involving various teams. Here are the ones you can hear about in France :

-Pro D2 and Top 14 : These two competitions are exclusively French. They are closely linked as, at the end of the end of each season (which starts end of August and ends at the beginning of June), the Pro D2 teams that finish 1rst and 2nd get upgraded to Top 14, and the two teams that finish 13th and 14th in Top 14 are relegated to Pro D2. The team that wins the Top 14 is France Champion and wins a special cup called "Bouclier de Brennus". Last year, the Top 14 Champion was Castres, a team from the South of France. Though the competition is French, the players aren't necessarily French- they come from all over the world.

-Heineken Cup (also called H Cup): The teams involved in this Championship are the same that are involved in Top 14, plus local teams from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy. Last year's Champion was the French team Toulon.

-VI Nations Tournament: An international tournament, in which are involved (surprise!) six national teams; France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Italy. It takes place every year, generally at the end of winter/beginning of spring. The titleholder is Ireland.

-Rugby World Cup: The Rugby World Cup is an event that takes place every four years in a different country. In 2011, it was hosted in New Zealand, and the All Blacks (NZ's national team) won. In 2015, it will be hosted in England.

Of course, there are other forms of rugby; in the Olympic Games, rugby will be played by teams of seven (VII's rugby), you can play rugby with XIII players... There are types of rugby that you play without tackling, like flag rugby (each player has a flag tucked in his shorts, and needs to release the ball if a player from the other team pulls it out), touch rugby (rules vary, but most of the time, if you're touched, you release the ball), which are very fun and are less "violent".

And that's rugby in a nutshell. Of course, there are many other rules, tournaments, etc. but I think that's enough for this article. If you're interested in joining a team (this is valid for girls and boys!), if you'd like to know more or if you just have a question, you can contact me at edlt@school.fr and I'll be glad to help you!

-Emma de la Tour, Ter S

Hello!

To celebrate 10k reads (omg!!!) and 400 votes, a little article written by Emma when she was still in secondary school (that's one year before the actual story takes place)... I'm writing it with info from 2014, some things have changed since, but most of it is the same :) If you have any questions, if the article isn't clear in your opinion, don't hesitate to tell me! 

Thank you so much again :) Enjoy your week end!

the_rugbywoman

P.S.: the actual story will be updated within a week :)