I think you mean a ruck, it takes about 3 seconds and the ruck is contested and entertaining when you understand what they're doing. Even the kicking is interesting when you know the thought behind it.
NFL vs Rugby
- Thread starter VorZakone
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Rugby League is a good watch. Union is ditchwater. But neither can be compared to the NFL.
The NFL is the best spectacle pro sports IMO. No other sports league has nailed parity and a fair distribution of talent quite like the NFL has. It's a league where success can't be bought, a bad team can become a very good team in just a couple of years and every team has a legitimate path to win. It is untouchable in that regard. Also, no other sport has a way of consuming it quite like Red Zone, despite it basically being as simple as "here is what is happening in all the games". Hard to believe no other sport has taken a model that works so well and adapted it. Soccer Saturday could do it for the Premier League if they really wanted, but instead you have to watch Matt Le Tissier and Paul Merson yell at football matches that the government says you're not allowed to watch. NFL Sundays are an occasion unmatched.
The NFL is the best spectacle pro sports IMO. No other sports league has nailed parity and a fair distribution of talent quite like the NFL has. It's a league where success can't be bought, a bad team can become a very good team in just a couple of years and every team has a legitimate path to win. It is untouchable in that regard. Also, no other sport has a way of consuming it quite like Red Zone, despite it basically being as simple as "here is what is happening in all the games". Hard to believe no other sport has taken a model that works so well and adapted it. Soccer Saturday could do it for the Premier League if they really wanted, but instead you have to watch Matt Le Tissier and Paul Merson yell at football matches that the government says you're not allowed to watch. NFL Sundays are an occasion unmatched.
Politicians are to blame for a lot of the ills of the world, but no football on British TV at 3pm ona Saturday isn't one of them, those rules are set in place by the Governing bodies of the game, but if you need someone to blame then blame Burnley 'cos it was their idea in the first place
The golazo show does it for champions league and Europa/conference
Yeah, that should have said governing bodies, and not government. But blaming Burnley is fine with me too.
No, the kicking is absolutely boring as sin.
Well done, you finally managed to put the ball out of play. What an offensive master class, the ball has left the playing field, riveting drama.
On the ruck subject, this isn't entertaining, it usually just leads to either an aimless kick (boring) or into another ruck (boring), ad infinitum until finally, someone apparently gives away a penalty.
Or at least we think so, the ref just blows his whistle seemingly at random due to some unknown infringement (just listen to commentators they barely know what was wrong).
Thankfully this puts us all out of our misery, no one knows who the penalty is for, the players look bewildered, then the ref points towards one team.
Then there is a scrum, the weirdest and most pointless thing in sports, given the defending team never get the ball, nor have an attempt at getting the ball because the Scrum Half just rolls the ball directly left or right out the back of their team. Because this rule is never enforced, the defending team can only try defend by getting another random penalty by hoping the scrum collapses in their favour.
If it collapses not in their favour, then it's another penalty, basically at this point it's made up, and the offensive team get a kick through the posts.
If the scrum stays up, which is increasingly rare, the scrum half then rolls the ball in, not straight, but at a right angle, out the back of his own team. Where he throws it to the fast players who run into the other fast players and we start the entire caper again. Into another ruck.
Or even worse, the scrum half gets the ball and kicks it and we start all over again.
And so it continues for 80 long, arduous minutes.
Yes, one billion percent.
I love listening to Merson staring at a small flat screen, barely able to communicate what is happening or some ex-QPR forward sat in the ground at Dagenham trying to tell me Gordon Smith-Webster has scored a header.
I once watched a stream where there were two games on simultaneously and every time something exciting happened in the game they weren’t broadcasting they would show footage of the other match (including commentary) in a video within video format. It was an insufferable ADHD style nightmare. And that was just two games. The mind boggles about how it would work with a bunch of them on all at once.
I guess in a sport as boring and full of relentless stoppages as the NFL (and which consists of discrete actions, cobbled together, without any flow, momentum or continuity) it works ok but if it ever comes to football that will be the final straw. I’m out for good.
That seems a bit dramatic, for something that would be optional viewing. Red Zone hasn't replaced watching full live games in the NFL. it's just an option to watch what's going on in more than one game, if you want to. I watch it if the team I follow isn't playing, and it's great for that. As was mentioned a few posts above, they do it for CL/EL football, I haven't seen it for a while as I don't have BT/TNT anymore, but I remember it being a good, preferable to flicking between games or watching highlights of each game afterwards.
Each to their own but I hate flicking back and forth between different football matches. Completely takes you out of the experience of watching the game you’re most interested in. I would much rather watch highlights of the other games after.
It should be easy enough to accept that different sports can be viewed differently, there isn’t a one size fits all. Golf, for example, is one where you can cut away to see multiple different things happening. You wouldn’t just watch one player do 18 holes.
Sports like tennis or football (soccer) would be pointless as you’d miss a lot of action, and you never know when moments are going to happen. I wouldn’t personally have an issue watching Saturday 3pm games in a packaged show where you mainly watch one game and flick away for other goals on a delay. Like someone else said, the BT sport European show was decent.
Redzone really is great, but again, it’s a sport that suits it well. As the name suggests, you know when a team is going to be in the attacking zone so you can spotlight that game, for unexpected highlights, it’s really simple to play them on delay when there is a break in play. My missus hates it, even though she likes the NFL. Each to their own.
Sports like tennis or football (soccer) would be pointless as you’d miss a lot of action, and you never know when moments are going to happen. I wouldn’t personally have an issue watching Saturday 3pm games in a packaged show where you mainly watch one game and flick away for other goals on a delay. Like someone else said, the BT sport European show was decent.
Redzone really is great, but again, it’s a sport that suits it well. As the name suggests, you know when a team is going to be in the attacking zone so you can spotlight that game, for unexpected highlights, it’s really simple to play them on delay when there is a break in play. My missus hates it, even though she likes the NFL. Each to their own.
So NFL is great because it gets a bit exciting when lot of games happen at the same time? Hardly the most compelling sales pitch...
Is that thought 'I wish I was a footballer'?
It used to be entertaining when once in a while somebody would break through the endless rucking and score a try but it must be at least 5 years since that last happened.
"Introduced in 1960 and proposed by Burnley chairman Bob Lord, the ban on 3pm games being televised was to counteract the negative impacts it would have on lower division teams." - seems a bit nonsensical to me.
As I recall it, in club football, you were lucky to see anything more than the FA Cup final live on TV until the 80's, some international games in midweek, and the funniest of them all, City winning the ECWC and not on TV!
Redzone is the pinnacle of professional sports.
Sure. My main point (which got a bit lost) is that the fact NFL can be “consumed” in that way is why I find it a lot less interesting than rugby or football (or any other sport that isn’t as full of interruptions as NFL) because the ebb and flow and moments that have nothing to do with scoring are also interesting to watch.
That's one of the times it is exciting. It's not the only time, since not all games do kick off simultaneously. Majority of games in their own right are exciting, since blowout victories are relatively rare and anyone can beat anyone. It just has a platform to be able to keep up with when several games kick off at the same time, which is great. Watching individual games is great too.
NFL. More entertaining, unpredictable and redzone on a Sunday is too good to miss.
I like watching rugby union too but can become very boring very quickly.
I like watching rugby union too but can become very boring very quickly.
I just can't get into rugby at all. I've tried a few times, but it does nothing for me. American Football is fecking brilliant though. And the NFL fantasy football is so much better than the FPL one.
I think if you don't understand the kicking, the rucks and the scrums then you're not going to enjoy rugby. Most people who don't like football describe it the same way you do rugby. "Oh you've passed it sideways again, great. Oh you've got a corner and then you'll hit the first man, great."
Handballs are at least as random in football as the scrums are (which are pretty random to my eyes too). The kicking and rucks are pretty accurately refereed though.
Used to be? Did you ever like rugby?
I'm amazed at how strongly some people hate rugby. I get why some people wouldn't like it but I swear for some people, hating it is a personality trait.
No disrespect to anyone but I have previously seen long debates on football vs NFL and even though I prefer NFL, I can live with the idea of people choosing football . Rugby on the other hand isn’t even close for me honestly. I watch a good amount of Rugby but it is a difficult sport to get into as a viewer because so much of what happens isn’t really clear to most people and is based on the interpretation of the refs.
I've watched rugby for what must be about 20 years (admittedly very casually, Six Nations matches etc) but I've still got absolutely no clue what most scrum/breakdown penalties are being called for. The ref could flat out be making things up most of the time and I wouldn't know.
Same and one of the weird things for me is how little effort the commentators make to actually explain what exactly is going on with the penalties.
Sometimes, sometimes not. Definitely not the scenario you're painting. Not sure what your point is.
Don't watch it then
Writing something like this is pure wumming, or sadder still, genuinely not understanding the game and still spending time to write something long and clueless.
I used to. Like I said upthread I can only think turning professional has ruined it, the players are all so big and fast now that it's rare for anybody to break through the lines.Used to be? Did you ever like rugby?
I'm amazed at how strongly some people hate rugby. I get why some people wouldn't like it but I swear for some people, hating it is a personality trait.
I think it's the fans, they're the worstUsed to be? Did you ever like rugby?
I'm amazed at how strongly some people hate rugby. I get why some people wouldn't like it but I swear for some people, hating it is a personality trait.
Because they don't know or when they analyse a replay, they can't fathom why.
A corner hitting the first man is a lack of technical application. It's not a cornerstone of the game.
I've never liked it much probably because I was forced to play it at school and hated it. To watch it was far more entertaining when more tries. Why has this changed so much? Rule changes? Or?Used to be? Did you ever like rugby?
I'm amazed at how strongly some people hate rugby. I get why some people wouldn't like it but I swear for some people, hating it is a personality trait.
NRL/League is a far better game to watch imo.
NFL all day long for me.
Tried so many times to get into Rugby but I just can't and I don't quite get why. In theory I should like it given like of NFL. Maybe it's the whole "rugby lad" thing as they all tend to be idiots getting their dicks out all the time.
Tried so many times to get into Rugby but I just can't and I don't quite get why. In theory I should like it given like of NFL. Maybe it's the whole "rugby lad" thing as they all tend to be idiots getting their dicks out all the time.
That's a major reason why I dislike it. Particularly because I went to school in a heavily rugby league area. We all wanted to play league, but the head of PE was a Welshman, so he decided we were playing Union. We'd get scolded for passing it down the line, instead of just running into the opposition and then rolling around in the mud. Every PE session was just an hour of rucks, or whatever that big pile on is called.
A bunch of us wanted there to be a school rugby league team, since every school around us played league (because it was West Yorkshire, so of course they did) but we weren't allowed to play it, not even as an extra-curricular activity.
So now I hate rugby union. And the Welsh.
I dont hate nfl but I prefer both codes of rugby,
One thing in particular that pisses me off in nfl though is when they do an interception get tackled then run the whole length of the pitch and do a pose. Congratulations you made a basic catch no need to do all that nonsense.
One thing in particular that pisses me off in nfl though is when they do an interception get tackled then run the whole length of the pitch and do a pose. Congratulations you made a basic catch no need to do all that nonsense.
Some people have said that. They've tried to tinker with the rules to make teams have more players in the backfield to catch kicks so there's less of them forming a big wall across the pitch.
I'm not sure it has. Looking at games from decades ago, the scorelines seem similar. Plenty of people who like rugby moan about parts of it though and there are people who want tries to be easier to score. Same as how half of football pundits have said "the games gone" at some point.
Missed this thread.. my god some of the ill informed comments about NFL are just cringey.
I have played both, watched both (although admittedly Rugby is confined to England nowadays). Rugby is a contact sport, American football is a collision sport. Tactics play a far far bigger role in NFL, but an individual can make a much bigger difference to an NFL team/game.
I have played both, watched both (although admittedly Rugby is confined to England nowadays). Rugby is a contact sport, American football is a collision sport. Tactics play a far far bigger role in NFL, but an individual can make a much bigger difference to an NFL team/game.