Six Nations

[PeteC]

Quite a web site he's put together BB. Great pics as well. Must be fun playing in the mud! .

I do notice the beginning of what I call "rugby ear" on some of them. I see by watching the lions/blues on TV last week that many pros are now wearing that soft looking helmet, I guess to prevent your ear from looking like a pork sausage after a few years.

I question how American lads would handle themselves if rugby became big in the States? With all that contact and what appears to be confusion, I don't think they would have the discipline to STOP when the whistle was blown. They would get carried away and it would turn into a brawl. Just an opinion.

However, I was once told by a Brit that Rugby is a gentlemen's sport whereas football (soccer) is not. Pete

[Jaime]

League,however is a much more fluent,open game.

** Stifled snigger **

For 'fluent & open' read 'one dimensional'. A much wider variety of skills are required in union and it caters for players of many different shapes & sizes. It's just more interesting as a result, hence its world wide appeal.

Pete - until the mid 1990's rugby union, although an established international sport, was still an amateur game and lost many players to the fully professional 'league' version of the sport. Players who professionalised themselves (even by writing autobiographies) were banned from the game. There was a very Victorian approach to the notion of amateurism as a noble, unsullied and 'corinthian' ideal that confirmed the status of 'gentleman' on amateurs and of 'players' on professionals.

I am sure that the league aficionados on the site will be able to fill you in on the details of how the two codes diverged as, essentially, a result of class differences (although in Wales, where rugby union is the national sport, it is played mainly by the working classes) and of how all rugby union followers are Nazis because the WW2 Vichy regime in France banned rugby league in favour of union. I've heard it all before...zzzzzzzzzz........

As far as I'm concerned it just goes to show that fascism wasn't all bad!

[Jaime]

However, I was once told by a Brit that Rugby is a gentlemen's sport whereas football (soccer) is not. Pete

Pete, the old cliche goes that "football is a game played by gentlemen and watched by thugs, whereas rugby is a game played by thugs and watched by gentlemen."

Total bollocks. You only have to watch premiership football to realise that it is not a game played by gentlemen. A real gentleman takes a punch in the eye off an opponent and then buys him a beer after the game. This happens at all levels of rugby.

Went to see my team Cardiff Blues get stuffed at the weekend but after the match current and former players were in the club house with the fans - kiwis amongst you will know of Xavier Rush and Ben Blair - and those older rugby fans will remember the legendary Barry John. Current followers will know Wales & Lions' Martyn Williams, one of the world's best openside flankers at the moment. What other top level sport accommodates this sort of interraction between top level international players and the paying fans?

Fantastic!