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By Chico Harlan
October 19, 2007 12:00am
US sportswriter Chico Harlan had his first taste of rugby league this week. From a bar stool, he received an education.
I BELIEVE it's a little-known matter of Constitutional policy that Americans (and I'm guilty as charged) must spend at least several hours every weekend watching great spasms of brutality on television. We call this football. For almost every weekend of my life, I've watched this sport in steady, unhealthy quantities.
But two weeks ago, I moved to Sydney for a six-month reporter's contract with The Daily Telegraph. That means receiving an education on the sporting differences between two countries separated by 14 time zones, one hemisphere and one brand of footy.
So last Sunday, I watched my first rugby league match, and the good afternoon of human collisions - as Australia battled, and dismembered, New Zealand - made this American feel right at home.
The basic concepts of rugby league translate quite well - even when a viewer has little clue about the nuances. After all, when you're watching a foreign movie scene with gunfire, you don't tend to require subtitles. For two hours, one American hunkered down at a Sydney bar (hotel) and watched eight Aussie rookies (debutants) take over the game (match).
The action entertained, and sometimes even marvelled. While watching, I found myself continually trying to complete this sentence: Aussie footballers make their US counterparts look like: Wimps? Pacifists? Tweed-wearing professors? A cocktail party collection of playwrights who wouldn't fight one another for the last piece of tuna tartare? Never did find an appropriate answer.
Though rugby league operates on similar principles to US football - one imposing group of men pushes forward, another imposing group resists - it redefines the brutality, raising it so high into the stratosphere that you feel not repulsed by it, but mesmerised. Players collide into one another (again and again, and very willingly) at breakneck speeds. Without helmets. Without pads of any sort. Wearing nothing but high-riding shorts, like an Italian's bathing trunks.
Perhaps the collisions are more tangible than in US football because here, you actually see the players' faces. You see them grimace and grin and bleed. You start to feel almost like you know them, at least until they're carried off on stretchers. For me, it scarcely mattered that all the Kangaroos, based on their uniform design, were identified across their backs by the same curious surname: PlayStation.
Rugby of any variety - league or union - still hasn't caught on in the States, likely because football owns such a commanding grip on the male attention span. At the college level back home, rugby isn't recognised as a sanctioned sport.
On this side of the planet, fans of losing World Cup teams demand the sacking their coaches. Over there, US fans wouldn't even know the name of the coach to sack.
This particular footy match, of course, was neither competitive nor dramatic. I watched the final half, with the winner already decided, only to gain greater understanding about rugby league's rules and details.
Gotta say, almost everything made perfect sense. At least so long as you don't worry about those missing helmets.
By Chico Harlan
October 19, 2007 12:00am
US sportswriter Chico Harlan had his first taste of rugby league this week. From a bar stool, he received an education.
I BELIEVE it's a little-known matter of Constitutional policy that Americans (and I'm guilty as charged) must spend at least several hours every weekend watching great spasms of brutality on television. We call this football. For almost every weekend of my life, I've watched this sport in steady, unhealthy quantities.
But two weeks ago, I moved to Sydney for a six-month reporter's contract with The Daily Telegraph. That means receiving an education on the sporting differences between two countries separated by 14 time zones, one hemisphere and one brand of footy.
So last Sunday, I watched my first rugby league match, and the good afternoon of human collisions - as Australia battled, and dismembered, New Zealand - made this American feel right at home.
The basic concepts of rugby league translate quite well - even when a viewer has little clue about the nuances. After all, when you're watching a foreign movie scene with gunfire, you don't tend to require subtitles. For two hours, one American hunkered down at a Sydney bar (hotel) and watched eight Aussie rookies (debutants) take over the game (match).
The action entertained, and sometimes even marvelled. While watching, I found myself continually trying to complete this sentence: Aussie footballers make their US counterparts look like: Wimps? Pacifists? Tweed-wearing professors? A cocktail party collection of playwrights who wouldn't fight one another for the last piece of tuna tartare? Never did find an appropriate answer.
Though rugby league operates on similar principles to US football - one imposing group of men pushes forward, another imposing group resists - it redefines the brutality, raising it so high into the stratosphere that you feel not repulsed by it, but mesmerised. Players collide into one another (again and again, and very willingly) at breakneck speeds. Without helmets. Without pads of any sort. Wearing nothing but high-riding shorts, like an Italian's bathing trunks.
Perhaps the collisions are more tangible than in US football because here, you actually see the players' faces. You see them grimace and grin and bleed. You start to feel almost like you know them, at least until they're carried off on stretchers. For me, it scarcely mattered that all the Kangaroos, based on their uniform design, were identified across their backs by the same curious surname: PlayStation.
Rugby of any variety - league or union - still hasn't caught on in the States, likely because football owns such a commanding grip on the male attention span. At the college level back home, rugby isn't recognised as a sanctioned sport.
On this side of the planet, fans of losing World Cup teams demand the sacking their coaches. Over there, US fans wouldn't even know the name of the coach to sack.
This particular footy match, of course, was neither competitive nor dramatic. I watched the final half, with the winner already decided, only to gain greater understanding about rugby league's rules and details.
Gotta say, almost everything made perfect sense. At least so long as you don't worry about those missing helmets.
