I don’t pay much attention to the NFL pre-season, in part because it’s filled with games that don’t count, and I’m not that into watching practice squad (and UFL) fodder compete for jobs. These games aren’t anything to take seriously.

That said, Lions rookie Ndamukong Suh is clearly taking the mere presence of Jake Delhomme very seriously here. The more I watch this, the more I wonder if Suh had a wager on that Panthers-Cardinals playoff game a couple seasons ago — you know, the one where Jake threw four interceptions, somehow didn’t get benched, and then threw two more. If I were a broke college student, and someone cost me a hundred bucks, I might want to smack them down, too.

Then again, if I were a broke college student betting on football games, I might need someone to call Gambler’s Anonymous for me…

Here are some other things going on in the wide world of football:

• The NFL and CDC are teaming up to fight 6 decades of “You’re not hurt that bad!” thinking about concussions. Good luck with that, boys. (Playbook)
• Is there really any need to shorten the preseason, other than money? (Shutdown Corner)
• If you’re visiting South Africa, be sure to check out the grand white elephants. (Dirty Tackle)
• If you’re visiting New Zealand, saying the words “Rugby”, “World” and “Cup” together out loud might cost you. You’ve been warned. (Techdirt)
• An American rugby sevens player will take a crack at the UFL. It probably helps that he played football at LSU. (FanHouse)
• Like Boise State’s blue turf? Check out Eastern Washington’s red turf. (via EDSBS, who thinks that red turf is JUST SO METAL!!!)
• Wanna buy a share of Arsenal? Only 100 easy payments of £102.50. (Pitch Invasion)
• Harry Redknapp will not tolerate your insinuations. (EPL Talk)
• Your 2010 AFL Finals series Week 1 fixtures, which make me wish Time Warner Cable would stop being so stingy and give us our ESPN3. (AFL.com.au)

Also, for those of you participating in this site’s Fantasy Premier League competition, I’ll have a prize announcement later today.

(H/T to Will Brinson for the video)

His latest challenge? Rugby sevens. How he still had enough working fingers to type afterward remains a mystery.

We trot up and down the field, passing the ball back and forth. The one thing about rugby that isn’t intimidating is the ball: oval, nubbly to the touch, it has the feel of a perfectly engineered ball for its sport, almost begging to be carried. If an American football is a squirrely piece of leather begging to be fumbled, a rugby ball is a good-tempered snuggler, easy to kick, pass, or carry without fumbling.

Chris is taking pictures and video. “Man this looks like fun.”

“Wait until he lights me up on a tackle. You might change your mind.”

Avery grins and nods. “Oh, that’ll happen.”

You can read the rest at SB Nation.

While most Americans’ footballing attentions are focused on Friday’s pivotal World Cup match between the USA and Slovenia, another U.S. national football team of sorts will be playing for some minor hardware on Saturday at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, NJ.

USA Rugby is playing in the Plate Final, i.e. the third place match, of the 2010 Churchill Cup, an invitational rugby union tournament involving the USA, Canada, England’s 2nd team (known as England Saxons) and three invitational teams. The Eagles lost to the Saxons but managed to beat Russia, 39-22. Highlights from that match are in that video above. (Thanks to Simon for letting me know about it.)

All three finals will take place at Red Bull Arena on Saturday, with the USA v. France A game kicking off at 5:30. You can find more info about it here. It’s not that often that you get to see competitive international rugby union on U.S. soil, so if you’re in the neighborhood, you might want to give it a look.

The Melbourne Storm, who won the NRL Premiership in 2007 and 2009 and the Minor Premiership (a/k/a the regular season title) for three years from 2006 to 2008, have had all of their honors stripped after it was revealed that they violated salary cap rules. These violations weren’t small either. The NRL salary cap is only $4.2 million a year for 25 players, and the Storm managed to pay players an extra $1.7 million during its successful five-year run.

What’s more, the club used some dubious dual-book accounting to record these under-the-table payments, paying a marquee used for corporate entertainment $20,000 per game — despite the fact that the marquee was already provided under their ground hire agreement. That sort of financial shiftiness will get you in trouble with the tax man. News reports in Australia are suggesting people will go to prison for this.

Perhaps the worst thing about this story is that the Storm are the only NRL club in Victoria, which is an AFL stronghold. Ten NRL clubs are based in New South Wales, and nine of those clubs are based somewhere in Sydney. By contrast, ten of the AFL’s 16 clubs are based in Victoria, with nine of them in Melbourne.

So if the Storm end up getting shut down over this — and that’s not out of the question yet — what do all those rugby league supporters in Melbourne do? Do they go back to the AFL? Do they start supporting the Melbourne Victory of the A-League? Do they pick another club? Do they try to get a white knight to step in and start a new club? Clearly, there’s a market there, and markets, like nature, abhor a vacuum.

It also begs the question — what would have happened to an NFL team that violated salary cap rules? If this old news report about the Denver Broncos was any indication, not nearly as much as what the Storm are facing.

(Thanks to Jeff H for the skinny.)

A century from now — assuming the world isn’t hit with a series of nasty EMPs that wipe out everyone’s hard drives and destroy the electronics we need to read discs and flash memory — we’ll have pristine HD video of football matches that will show people just how incredible Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney really were. Clearly, technology has come a long way in 109 years, which is how old this footage of a Newcastle v. Liverpool match is.

This footage comes from something called the Mitchell and Kenyon Collection, which depict English life in the earliest days of film. The British Film Institute has been digitizing and uploading to YouTube, and their clips are among the oldest surviving footage of early 1900s football in England. Other clips feature a Merseyside Derby from 1902, footage of Sheffield United’s celebrity goalkeeper Fatty Foulkes, Manchester United playing its first season with that name — rather than Newton Heath, the name that’s been referenced in the supporters’ “Green & Gold” protests against Malcolm Glazer.

If these old film clips reveal anything, though, they reveal this — while video technology has changed dramatically, Association football has remained pretty constant for the last 110 years. The athletes and the tactics might be more impressive these days, but the game itself remains pretty much the same.

Rugby also hasn’t changed too much, as this Oldham v. Swinton “Northern Union” match from 1901 demonstrates. Interestingly, though, this match took place five years before rugby league’s “play-the-ball” rule was instituted, and instead of the tackled player heeling the ball back to a teammate, there was actually a scrum after every tackle. In a way, it was a bit of like American football in 1901.

I haven’t been able to find any American football videos quite as old as these, although this footage of the 1915 Rose Bowl between Washington State and Brown should give you an idea of how much different the gridiron game is compared to 95 years ago:

(Early soccer vids spotted on EPL Talk.)

Every change creates ripple effects, which makes it all the more difficult to see the big picture until enough time has passed and we can look at the bigger picture. If John Bassett hadn’t contracted lung cancer, would he have been able to prevent Donald Trump from leading the USFL over a cliff? Maybe, but we couldn’t see that while it was happening.

That’s why some soccer fans in America are having such a negative reaction to the news that Fox Sports International is about to buy out Setanta Sports USA. They only see the immediate change in the world in front of them. If Setanta goes away, it would mean on the surface that there would be less Premier League matches to watch each weekend.

Nothing, however, operates in a vacuum, and most of these fans are ignoring the $4.3 billion elephant in the room.

The problem with Setanta Sports has always been cost as a barrier to entry. You have to be a truly dedicated football fan — or a paid blogger who’s creative with tax write-offs — to shell out an extra $15 a month to watch that much more football. This is why Setanta has only been able to attract about 65,000 subscribers in the USA, giving it a monthly income of $975,000.

By comparison, Fox Soccer Channel is in 32 million homes and pulls about $0.06 per subscriber from cable and satellite providers. That’s $1.92 million a month, almost double what Setanta takes in monthly, and because it’s part of a massive media conglomerate, FSC is always going to have the upper hand.

They don’t get any more massive, however, than ESPN, which pulls a whopping $3.65 per subscriber from cable and satellite providers. Multiply that by 98 million homes, and you’re talking $357.7 million a month.

So it stands to reason that if company A 1.) brings in 366 times more cash than company B, and 2.) wants something you have, it might be willing and able to pay just a little bit more cash for it.

That something, of course, is the TV rights to the Premier League and the UEFA Champions League in the USA. Fox has these things for the next three years. ESPN, meanwhile, has the FIFA World Cup, and it doesn’t want all those world-class players to fade from memory after the World Cup is over.

Those world-class players don’t play here. The world’s best baseball, basketball and hockey players play in the USA, sure, but the world’s best footballers don’t play in MLS. Hell, most U.S. national team members play in Europe these days. Even Landon Donovan is in Merseyside right now, and Stuart Holden seems headed for the UK himself. Given the current state of MLS labor negotiations, we don’t even know for sure if our domestic league season will start on time.

Plus, the Premier League fits ESPN’s programming schedule better than anything American club soccer has to offer, and the quality of play is generally higher. The WWL can pull much better ratings with baseball and basketball in prime time while filling its weekend morning and weekday afternoon schedules with soccer. EURO 2008 was cheap mid-day programming for ESPN, but the Nielsen ratings proved there was an appetite for top-shelf soccer in this country.

So why didn’t ESPN just acquire the TV rights to the Premier League and Champions League itself, rather than ceding them to Fox? For the same reason ESPN let Setanta UK fail before swooping in themselves — to save money. Let Fox shell out the big bucks to get those TV rights, or to try and mesh what’s left of  Setanta’s corporate culture with its own. Sub-licensing Premier League matches is much cheaper for ESPN, who only has to pay for a studio team in Bristol and make way for the league’s own satellite feed.

As for the Champions League, Fox’s buyout of Setanta allows them to keep this year’s knockout stage exclusively on its own networks. UEFA set up the schedule for the knockout stage so that only two matches would be happening simultaneously on any given day. That means one match on FSC and one on Fox Sports Net. What happens next season remains uncertain, but I think Fox wants to keep this competition to itself.

And what about the FA Cup or the other leagues in Scotland, France and Russia? Fox could easily sub-license those to ESPN as well, and the WWL could shuttle them over to ESPN360, which already has La Liga, Serie A and the Football League, among other things.

So do not fret over the Setanta buyout, fellow soccer fans. You won’t be getting fewer games as a result of this deal. You’ll just watch them on different channels.

Now, if you’re a rugby union fan, you’ll probably have to shift your cash to Rugby Zone or some other online feed — unless those matches wind up on ESPN360, too, which is entirely possible. That’s where the Australian Football League ended up last year. If you’re Irish and want to watch the GAA… well, honestly, I don’t know what to tell you at this point. This deal was always about those filthy garrison games. You might be out of luck.

The rest of us, though, will be saving $180 a year for the same amount of football, which is awesome. I’d use my savings to get season tickets for my local club, if only Sunil Gulati would stop trying to stamp it out of existence. He’s looking more like Agent Smith to me every day.

The latest battle in the Aussie Football Wars, however, won’t be fought over beers. Lost amidst the massive English and American bids for the 2018 World Cup is the fact that Australia would like to host FIFA’s big show, too, because soccer is growing down under, too.

And guess what? The AFL and NRL aren’t giving up their stadiums for your girl’s game. Oh, no.

See, unlike England and America, Australia has not one, but two major pro football leagues in season in June and July, and those leagues aren’t too keen on giving up some of their stadiums in the middle of the season. Sure, the World Cup might be the biggest sporting event on the planet and might bring unprecedented tourism dollars to Australia. That won’t stop the AFL and NRL from looking at it as a not only a huge shot in the arm to the competition, but a massive pain in the ass.

Perhaps if Football Federation Australia really wants to follow through on its darkhorse bid, it should start considering some new construction. Melbourne Cricket Ground can fit 100,000 people, but for a soccer game, they’ll all be about half a mile away from the action. Imagine paying the GDP of Slovenia for front row seats to the World Cup Final, only to find your view is partially obstructed by that bench 20 yards in front of you.

As much as I’d love to see the World Cup return to the States, I’m now hoping Australia does get it soon, if only to see just how ugly and bitter the Aussie Football Wars can get. I can’t wait to see the AFL devise ways to lure packs of Brazilians and Ivorians down to Docklands. “We’ll show ya some real footy, mates!” The resulting confusion alone might make for great television.

(Spotted on Pitch Invasion.)

I suggested that DeShaun Foster was better off taking a knee after getting that first down, rather that running into the end zone, because then the Saints never would have gotten the ball, and the Panthers could have run out the clock with a 4-point lead. As you might expect, the FanHouse commenters thought mockery was the proper response to that idea, in part because the Panthers still won the game.

Three years later, Maurice Jones-Drew takes a knee at the 1-yard line for the Jacksonville Jaguars, setting up a game winning 21-yard field goal and preventing the New York Jets from getting the ball back. It was a riskier move, because the Jags were trailing by a point with 1:48 left, but Jones-Drew seems to be attracting universal praise for making a smart strategic play.

The point here is that you don’t give your opponent the opportunity to score if you don’t have to. This is why Bill Belichick really went for it on 4th down on his own 28-yard line against the Colts. Converting meant Peyton Manning would not get the ball, and the Pats could run out the clock. Punting meant Manning was all but guaranteed to get the ball and engineer a game-winning drive. Plus, Belichick put his faith in his best player — Tom Brady — to get the job done.

We shouldn’t criticize Belichick for choosing to go for it. We should, however, get on his case about the play he chose to call. Honestly, the coaches couldn’t have picked something better than that?

Here are some other interesting football stories you might have missed:

• UNC serves up its most fortunate illegal forward pass since 1895. [WRAL FANKind]
• Dan Marino inadvertently shares his true feelings about the Wildcat formation. [Awful Announcing]
• Chicago Bears fans are sore losers, even when they win. [FanHouse]
• Allen Iverson as a Philadelphia… Eagle? Right. [The Sporting Blog]
• Japan calls on South Africa to ban the vuvuzela. Yeah, good luck with that, fellas. [The Guardian]
• Katy Perry launches new line of West Ham United lingerie. Now we know what Michelle Obama is getting for Christmas. [The Guardian]
• Belated congratulations to the Raleigh Venom, champions of Division II USA Women’s Rugby. [WRAL FANKind]

For those of you not familiar with rugby sevens, it’s a 7-on-7 version of rugby union (which is usually 15-on-15) that was created in 1883 in Melrose, Scotland, by Ned Haig, a butcher who was trying to raise money for his local club. It’s played on a full-size pitch with 10-minute halves, which allows an entire tournament to be played in a weekend. Because there are only 7 players per side, the game is much more wide open, so it emphasizes speed over brute strength.

The biggest sevens event is the IRB Sevens World Series, an eight-city affair that runs from December to May. Most of those Sevens World Series events tend to have a party atmosphere, including women dressed in costume, if this Flickr photo set of the New Zealand Sevens is any indication. That should make it a perfect fit for Rio in 2016.

The question remains, though, whether this will make other forms of rugby more popular around the world. The wide open nature of sevens might make some rugby-curious folks look in on something like the Tri-Nations series or the Heineken Cup and decide, “Eh, I like sevens better.” The Sevens World Series could be the only real winner here in the long run.

Then again, perhaps the fact that this will make anyone rugby-curious — and it will — is a win for the code. We’ll have to wait and see, though, what this does for the next Rugby World Cup 2011. I suspect even then, it’ll be too soon to tell.

By the way, the future might belong to China, but with the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, the next decade definitely belongs to Brazil. We need to start learning to speak some Portuguese.

I think we all know which one of these methods will end up working better in the long run.

Spike TV, being a TV network and all, is counting on the former. In the wake of Setanta UK’s collapse and the American network’s big sell-off of non essential properties, Spike bought the rights to Australia’s National Rugby League and is airing matches from the NRL finals series on Friday nights. While there won’t be any Russell Crowe sightings this year — his South Sydney Rabbitohs missed the Finals by 2 points — the NRL fits right in with Spike’s “manly men doing manly things” programming. Plus, it gives them an opportunity to expose their core audience to top level rugby league without spending a whole lot of money.

That’s probably not the case for the founders of NRL USA, a new rugby league competition in America that is slated to launch in 2010 with 8 teams in 8 cities. Ignoring the fact that this country’s econopocalypse has encouraged everyone to stop spending money, these guys have to convince sports fans to come out and watch “the USA’s premier rugby talent.”

Do we even have premier rugby talent here? It seems like this will be a bunch of dudes who played football (or rugby union at a high level) in college and are looking for another athletic outlet. We all know the premier rugby league talent is primarily in England and Australia. It’s the reason some soccer fans mock MLS and USL — the top players just don’t play here. Sports fans want to see the top players play at the top level. That’s why the Premier League and the NBA are so popular worldwide.

I do wish the NRL USA boys success with their venture, just because having three popular football codes in America would get us one step closer to the footballing awesomeness of Australia, but man, they’ve got a steep mountain to climb to find their audience. They’ll need help from both Spike TV and Russell Crowe even more than they realize.

Next, Scotland v. Fiji turns into a boxing match at the Rugby League World Cup:

The difference? For one, the soccer fight dragged on for a little while, and all sorts of side skirmishes broke out, whereas the rugby fight, while clearly fiercer, ended quckly, and nobody came off the bench.

For another, the rugby referee was clearly respected and feared. Show me one soccer ref on this planet — or one NFL ref, for that matter — that gets that much respect from the players. It’s as if the rugby refs are all scanners, and if you disobey them, they will make your head ‘splode. Which would be pretty awesome, come to think of it…

It has been widely reported that if Australia is to host soccer’s major event, then the only stadia capable of holding adequate crowds across the various states will be AFL and NRL venues. Ironically that is because soccer has not had sufficient success to build large stadia for itself. Yet now it has re-branded itself as simply “football” and increasingly journalists are abused if they dare to refer to it as soccer (its original nickname to distinguish it from the other codes of football). Some of kind of reverse-racism is in play – where once soccer was considered a game for ethnic minorities, now to even call it by that name is seen as discriminatory, yet its supporters and administrators claim the name football for themselves. Sadly, Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, has fallen into line.

And the sport’s peak body will almost certainly succeed in gaining access to the major venues of Australia, if it does secure the soccer World Cup. That’s because bodies such as the AFL and NRL would be seen as, that ugly term, “un-Australian” if they didn’t support the country’s bid, and no doubt there would also be government pressure to fall into line.

Read the rest at World Footy News. The football wars never end in Australia, do they?

This is supposed to be the big-money-no-whammies portion of the American soccer season, is it not? MLS has reached the win-or-go-home phase, the moment when everyone is supposed to tune in and see who wins that shiny new Anschutz Trophy. After all, this league has spent all season downplaying its clubs’ involvement in the CONCACAF Champions League and the U.S. Open Cup, because hey, the MLS season is more important. Now it all comes down to this.

So where’s the advertising blitz? Did I miss it? Did Soccer United Marketing pass me over? Does MLS not want American sports fans to know that the playoffs are on? Do they not want anyone to see guys like Brian McBride, Sacha Kljestan and Dwayne DeRosario compete to become this country’s domestic champion?

Right now, the biggest stories in MLS seem to be David Beckham wanting to get out of his contract with the L.A. Galaxy and Landon Donovan wanting to give European football another try. We should be focused on the clubs that are in the playoffs, but instead, the focus is on two big names who want out now that their so-called superclub has utterly failed on the pitch.

Doesn’t that sound like a failure in marketing? MLS and SUM appear to have no control over their message right now. It might be a sign that the league has lost its way. Perhaps instead of giving big money to European stars that won’t attract casual fans, MLS should go back to its original mission — developing American talent. Right now, the top American talent would rather not play in the top American league. What does that tell you?

Oh, by the way, attendance is off this year. That might be a result of $4/gallon gas more than anything, but that has to be a concern, does it not?

Also a concern: ESPN is cutting deals to stream Carling Cup and Coca-Cola Championship games online, a sure sign that the WWL is moving closer to its goal of acquiring the broadcast rights to the Premier League. Once the ESPN audience gets a good long look at the English leagues, will it still care about the American league?

The powers that be in MLS seem to think so, and hey, they might be right, but that doesn’t mean they can just sit back and count on the audience to come to them. SUM needs to spend some of that Beckham jersey cash to make fans care about these playoffs. Otherwise, the audience will ignore MLS just as much as it ignored its own Champions League, and that’s no good for anyone.

So I’m watching this video of the pregame war chants of Australia’s and New Zealand’s Rugby League World Cup teams, and all I can think is this: Damn. Look at how much space those fans have to spread out. You don’t see that many empty seats at a New York Red Bulls home game.

According to one report, the official attendance for the Australia v. New Zealand match was 34,157. Where were they all hiding?

UPDATE: Readers have now informed me that this was not the actual Australia v. New Zealand match at the Rugby League World Cup, but the Aborigines Vs. Maoris pregame match. So that explains A.) why there are so many empty seats, and B.) why I don’t write about rugby very much.

(Spotted on Deadspin.)

Simon informs me that the Rugby League World Cup began this week in Australia. This seems like it should be slightly more significant than a couple of International Rules test matches, but honestly, I just can’t bring myself to care. Go figure.

So I’m just going to point y’all here and here. Plus, there are more fun photos here.

This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if I should just pick one football code and write about that for a while…

At first glance, Michael Turner’s new nickname might have far more to do with certain forms of public transportation than Brazilian women’s football. Perhaps John Abraham is on to something here, though. After all, both Marta and MARTA are top talents who, on their best days, can become pure forces of nature. One cutback, and Turner is off. One sidestep, and Marta is pushing forward. Both leave defenders in their wake as they add another score to their stats and lead their teams to victory.

Some days, though, these forces of nature run into people with the rare ability and determination to control the weather…

Yes, it actually was proven in Beijing that you can prevent a downpour. It was proven in Charlotte, too. Ha.

This is why you want the rugby team on your side if you ever find yourself in a bar fight. Rugby footballers will kick some ass. Of course, if I found myself wearing that pink and blue monstrosity that the Stade Francais players are wearing, I’d want to beat the crap out of someone, too. Seriously, the Cincinnati Bengals uniforms are less ugly than that.

(Spotted on With Leather.)

Between those two things and Stuart Holden’s dumb foul at the end of the Netherlands game, the USA earned its trip home here. I hope Nowak earned a pinkslip.

US Open Cup: No quadruple for the New England Revolution. D.C. United topped New England, 3-1, in a game seen by less than 7,000 people. (Thanks for nothing, MLS.) Meanwhile, on a rainy night in Charleston, SC, the Seattle Sounders took the Charleston Battery to penalty kicks, and the Battery came out on top. The Open Cup Final between D.C.U. and the Battery takes place on Wednesday, September 3, at RFK Stadium. It will probably be D.C.U.’s only chance to win a trophy and make the 2009 CONCACAF Champions League.

Premier League: Dimitar Berbatov is headed to Manchester United. (Was that deal ever not going to happen?) Meanwhile, Tottenham Hotspur has not yet secured Andrei Arshavin from Zenit St. Petersburg. Expect even more “SPURS GET BENT” headlines from British Tabloids.

AFL: The Sydney Swans just signed 24-year-old Canadian rugby fullback Mike Pyke to their rookie list. Their next target: Chris Chambers…

Dude can mark. Ha ha.

Programming Note: Blogging will be light for the rest of the week, as I’m off to Las Vegas for a few days. I’ll have something resembling a Premier League preview up on Friday, but that will probably be about it until next week. On a side note, I made a grand total of $3.06 yesterday from my banner ad network, thanks to this Stuart Scott karaoke post. I’d promise not to spend it all in one place, but really, I’ve got a lot of postcards to buy…

Well, guess what shows up in my inbox today?

Hello Dave,

I am currently working on the cinema release of Cass, which is based on the life of Cass Pennant member of West Ham’s ICF.

The film is due for released on 1st August and I was hoping you might be interested in feature the trailer and information about the film on your blog.

Please let me know if this is possible, I have placed the synopsis and trailer links for you below and here is a link to the website – http://www.cassmovie.co.uk/

I hope to hear from you soon.

Yes, it’s a movie about the Inter City Firm — just four days after the Inter City Firm shows up in the news, attempting to make trouble at an MLS match in America. Could it be that this so-called hooligan attack was really *gasp* a publicity stunt for this film?

If so, it’s either utter baloney or utter genius. Or both. I haven’t figured it out just yet. Either way, I have a hard time believing this is a total coincidence.

(Photo by Mike Thorn)

Rugby viewers in New Zealand last weekend got a little surprise with their sport — four minutes of hardcore porn. It seems a scheduling screw-up caused Prime TV to switch off from the game and over to Desperate Black Wives 2. As opposed to Desperate All-Black Wives, I suppose…

The mother in this news report — which, sadly, does not show the slip-up — seems strangely aghast and bemused at the same time. Or is that just the normal reaction to porn down in New Zealand?

(Spotted on Deadspin. Video spotted on FanHouse.)

The 2008 Tri-Nations Rugby Union series kicked off today in New Zealand — you may have seen the giant ad for it to the right there — and what better way to get it started than with a big fat haka from the All Blacks? If that doesn’t get your blood pumping a little faster, nothing will. (In case you’re wondering, yes, the Stellenbosch ELVs are being tested this year.)

The boys at MediaZone were nice enough to hook me up with a Rugby Channel account, which I will be testing today. They seem eager to give away a free one-month subscription to the Rugby Channel through this site, so keep an eye on this blog for details.

I don’t care what style of football you prefer. That’s a quality play.

(Spotted on The AFL Show)

The bulk of Argentina’s players, as well as those of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, are based in Europe. Whatever else might change in the brave new world, the timing of the competition will remain roughly the same – running from July to September.

That prevents both Argentina and either a combined Pacific Islands team or one of the three individual nations, depending on how things are structured, from gaining access to their best players. A competition featuring full-strength New Zealand, Australian and South Africa teams and a half-strength Argentina and Pacific Islands would be a disaster.

Indeed. That’s why it’s time for SANZAR and Europe to come together for the good of the sport. It’s time to combine Tri Nations with Six Nations, add Argentina and create Ten Nations Rugby.

Think about how big an event this would be in world sport — ten giants among national rugby union teams, criss-crossing the planet for nine weeks to play each other in a competition to determine true supremacy in the sport. Tell me that wouldn’t attract a huge international audience. Granted, it might be a scheduling nightmare, and those long plane trips would certainly test the limits of those athletes’ endurance, but it might be worth it to keep interest in rugby union alive in the nations where it’s most popular.

What do you think, rugby fans? Would you like to see Ten Nations Rugby? Or is there something else SANZAR could do to keep Tri Nations interesting?

Hard enough to survive a good smashing on concrete steps, anyway. I’d like to see that dork behind the anchor desk try to survive that.

(Spotted on Deuce of Davenport.)

(Spotted on With Leather)

Gold Coast Titans boss Michael Searle has attacked the Australian Football League’s expansion plans, labelling the AFL “cannibals” and vowing to fight to protect his team’s turf. …

He said the AFL’s aggressive attempt to make its presence felt in the region was the greatest challenge facing his (National Rugby League) club and he intended to be pro-active in repelling its advances.

“The AFL is aggressively trying to expand into traditional rugby league markets and we have to be equally aggressive in defending and growing our game,” Searle said. “The AFL has shown itself as a sport that wants to cannibalise. It doesn’t want to co-exist.

“I have great respect for what the Brisbane Lions have achieved in the past 10 years and feel for them in the predicament this will put them in, having to share revenue in a finite market. This battle has just begun, but we must have a plan that will counteract what the AFL is trying to achieve.”

To understand why this is a big deal, you have to understand the concept of club membership, which appears to be very unique to Aussie sports. These clubs don’t just want fans to buy tickets, walk in, cheer and leave like most American sports owners do. They want these supporters to feel like they’re involved in the success of the club itself — and with their financial support, they often are. Membership gets you special ticketing privileges, voting rights within the club, lots of free and discount gear, and the general feeling of being part of a very large family.

(This explains why the Sydney Swans supporter I spoke with at the Grand Final party in Raleigh would kiss the Swans logo on his cap in the middle of every other sentence. The membership system makes the Swans really feel like his club.)

Of course, the catch is that membership costs money, and Aussie sports fans only have so much of that. As Ando points out over at the AFL Footy Blog, lots of sports radio callers in Melbourne have said they can only afford one club membership, and they find themselves having to choose between the Melbourne Victory and their AFL club. So while the A-League and AFL schedules don’t compete with each other, the clubs themselves do.

Thus, the NRL is pissed off that the AFL is trying to encroach on their territory, because suddenly, they have to compete with them for members in markets that were exclusively theirs. That might be the main reason these football codes keep sparring with each other. It’s not enough to say that your code is superior — you have to convince your members to put the other code down so that they can help you sell more memberships.

As all these football leagues seek to expand, the battle for members will only grow more fierce every year, and old ladies will find even more entertaining words to describe Andrew Demetriou. References to roosters and lollipops grow more likely every day.

It has been a crazy week for football around the world, though, what with the Champions League knockout stage and the Super 14 starting, the NAB Cup well under way, and in America… the scouting combine. Oh, yes, the NFL scouting combine. There’s nothing creepy at all about young men in T-shirts and shorts being ogled by geezers with clipboards. Nothing at all.

It’s a sign that we take the NFL a little too seriously — some guys more than others — but really, where don’t they take football seriously on this planet?

Here’s a look around at some football stories around our planet this week:

• Michael David Smith has the combine covered. [NFL FanHouse]
• The Gladiator helmet has your brain covered. [Mighty MJD @ Yahoo]
• The Dolphins want to bring the Premier League to Miami. [Pitch Invasion]
• Just who is this Richard Scudamore character? [BBC Football]
• The troubled life of Gazza. [Goal]
• Trouble ahead for MLS? [ESPN Soccernet]
• Red cards ahead for swearing footballers? [The Offside]
• Is FIFA looking to rugby to help beleaguered refs? [Reuters Soccer Blog]
• Not everyone digs those ELVs. [The Rugby Blog]
• A lesson in drop punting. [Kick2Kick]
• AFL rejects plan to plunder Ireland. [Fox Sports Australia]
• Fantasy football is everywhere. [AFL Football Blog]
• Matt Walsh is watching you. [Deadspin]
• Troy Vincent may be full of shit. [Mighty MJD @ Yahoo]
• Everton waits for Michael Bradley. [Liverpool Echo]
• A primer on football in Argentina. [Pitch Invasion]
• Those UEFA Cup knockout ties look pretty good. [Reuters Soccer Blog]
• Some useful soccer news web sites. [The Offside]

That ought to hold you for a little while. In the meantime, I’ll be straightening up the house this weekend, as some fellow Carolina Railhawks supporters are coming over to watch the Carling Cup Final. Meanwhile, the Premier League, Super 14 and 6 Nations are on, while Australia will witness the A-League Grand Final and more NAB Cup preseason footy. Set your DVRs accordingly. I did.

Enjoy your football, everyone!

1. The Stellenbosch Laws require more stamina. Apparently, keeping the ball in play more means you have to run around more — which, of course, means you run out of breath more quickly. Every team seemed to run out of steam toward the latter part of the second half. This will require some extra cardio on the part of these players throughout the season.

2. South African players seem to kick into touch more. Perhaps it’s just part of the game plan in South Africa to play for field position through line outs than through looking for openings in the run of play. This would explain why I almost fell asleep during the Rugby World Cup Final a few months ago, when it seemed like the Springboks were playing for field position every time they got the ball. Clearly, though, the S.A. clubs have figured out these ELVs enough to know when to kick into touch.

3. South African announcers are boring. Seriously, the guys calling the Cheetahs v. Lions game literally sapped the energy right out of the viewing experience. It was like they were calling a round of golf, when in fact they were calling one of the closest games in the round. The Aussie and New Zealand presenters were much better at conveying excitement.

4. Jason Eaton has lost his razor. He could be auditioning to join ZZ Top. He might have just gone native. For whatever reason, though, the Hurricanes’ second-line man (pictured above) has gone Grizzly Adams on us. Someone should inform him the Stanley Cup Playoffs don’t start for another two months.

5. I still know far too little about rugby tactics. I’m going to stick with Super 14 for a few more weeks to see if I can figure out the different game plans of different teams, but there’s still a lot about this football code I don’t get yet. Plus, the AFL season is starting soon, European soccer is headed into its stretch run, and March Madness is coming to America. If posting about rugby drops off after a few weeks, that’s probably why.

I so wanted to write a headline here about a hooker getting a facial, but alas, Cory Jane is the fullback for the Hurricanes, not the hooker. Still, his pain is our gain, as he takes one for the team against the Waratahs. If this happened more often, rugby would be a lot more popular in America.

(For the record, I tried to upload this to YouTube, but it didn’t want to cooperate with me today. I guess they has enough face shot videos for one lifetime at that site.)

UPDATE (2/16): Better-quality YouTube vid is here.