Comments on: Switching Codes Is Always a Hassle

By: Black Man's Burden

Black Man's Burden — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:25:50 +0000

Okay, African Americans dominate every sport they endeavor to play… like it or not it’s ostensibly true. They primarily choose to play American sports, e.g, baseball, NFL football, and basketball. If for some inexplicable reason they decided to pursue rugby, yes, the would prove themselves to be on the top of that game

Net result: NFL players are some of the best conditioned athletes.

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:57:03 +0000

I think i would be interesting to repeat the Wigan V Bath experiment again. With over 10 years gone now since union was opened

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:51:07 +0000

I think one point that needs to be made is the fact that Rugby players need to have a large number of skills, whilst NFL players have to be good at one position with quite a specified role. So rugby wins there as a truer test of all round football ability. As well there is a big difference between athletes and football players.

And on another note there is absolutlely no chance that you could train a team of NFL players to play anything approaching football(soccer) to an EPL level. Soccer is all about the innate instinct that comes with years of playing the game, and the application of that speed of thought to speed of action. The best soccer players ever have never really been the best athletes, they have been the most creative and quickest thinkers. PLus all pro soccer players are from around 65–90kg max, your average NFL RB is way heavier than that.

By: a different dave

a different dave — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:59:42 +0000

Since this is sort of a rugby thread this seems to be good place to put this; heard about this on Sky Sports News on Fox Soccer Channel last night. Rugby league, Hull FC vs. Hull Kingston Rovers, post-match pitch invasion and small riot.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2007/07/09/sohull109.xml

Nothing living up to the rugby league riot standards of the 1970’s or 1980’s, thank goodness.

Also there’s a new show on FSC from England, called Premier League World. Caught it on my TiVo. They had a segment on Clint Dempsey and his move from MLS to Fulham in the Premier League.

By: Will

Will — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 15:13:40 +0000

If you could create a time machine and get the 18 Pro Bowlers back when they were 12 or under, then you could probabyl mold them into a world class team, but one year seems way too short to make a world class code change.

By: a different dave

a different dave — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:59:23 +0000

Anyone who thinks that a rugby player could simply switch to gridiron in a day and play NFL at anything near a competent level, is delusional.

Yes, if those Samoans had adopted gridiron and started playing it as young student players, yes, they could become very good gridiron players indeed. But then, they wouldn’t be rugby players today, would they? This works in reverse as well: gridiron players don’t make very good rugby players, especially when they pick the game up late. Just ask USA Rugby.

Switching from one code to another, especially after having been trained all one’s life in a different code, if not easy. If it were easy, we should see lots of rugby players switching to gridiron, because the money in the NFL is much, much, much greater. And don’t give me any jive about rugby players doing it “for the love of the game not the money” because we all know that’s a load of hogwash. Union and league players switch rugby codes all the time for the money.

So far the only people switching codes to play in the NFL are the kickers and punters - precisely the kind of specialized position that has the least to do with the actual skill needed for most gridiron positions.

Because of the gridiron squad system, player skills are extremely specialized. Rugby players who think they can learn the code that easily are fooling themselves. Just because gridiron derives from rugby does not mean one’s rugby skills and tactics are transferable. Gridiron has changed radically from rugby over the past century.

By: mike

mike — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:10:38 +0000

Rugby has a way bigger advantage over football (Am version) in that it is a far bigger international sport.
You forget that every international rugby team has its own style of play. National sides like the All Blacks, Springboks, Manu Samoa and Argentina play a smash-mouth type of game where there is as much sweat as flowing blood and broken bones during a test match.
The Manu Samoa and All Black Samoan players are much more athletic than their many fat cousins who play in the NFL.
Junior Seau once said that half the Manu Samoa team could don a motorcycle helmet and space suit and easily play NFL football tomorrow if they wanted to.. pic above is Samoan/All Black legend Vaaiga Tuigamala

By: matt

matt — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:41:22 +0000

Bottom line: It’s not apples to apples! Football players are like old violins: they are fine tuned to one thing extremely well and don’t provide much variation on a tune. Ray Lewis is a fantastic linebacker and undoubtedly a superior athlete, but could he do 80 minutes full-tilt playing offense and defense? Probably not. Could Brian O’Driscoll, the worlds most dynamic center, become a force to be reckoned with in the NFL? He’s a fantastic athelete with gamebreaking ability at the international level. But… he’s 5′10″/209lbs; which translates into him being a punter and not much else. It’s always a fantastic argument, and both sides are certainly athletic specimens, but at the end of the day you just can’t compare the two.

It should be noted that many former gridiron stars at the collegiate level have found great success in pro rugby. From my personal experience with the game (and from those who have gone pro overseas from the Americas) it seems that the positions of tight end and running back make people most accustomed to playing rugby. They have the fitness, strength, and smash mouth approach to the game that is required for rugby and is inherent in their positions in football. Rugby is a game where fitness is paramount, everything else is secondary, so the odds of you seeing walter thomas making tackles on the rugby field are slim to none. It certainly would be fun to watch!