Tuesday, April 19, 2011

First National Rubgy League Game!

Last night, Katy, Olivia, and I went to a National Rugby League (NRL) game with the Sydney Rabbitohs playing against the St. George Dragons. The Rabbitohs home stadium is at the ANZ Stadium, which is where the Olympics were held in 2000! The stadium is in Sydney Olympic Park, which was built just for the Olympics about 11 years ago. It was amazing walking up to the stadium knowing that records were broken and history was made in the same place I was about to enter. Luckily, we got to the stadium about 30 minutes before the game started, so we walked around for a bit exploring the complex. Right outside of the ANZ Stadium, there were hundreds of colored poles sticking up out of the ground. As we walked up to the poles, I realized that alphabetically, each one of the athletes who participated in the Sydney 2000 Olympics names were inscribed on the poles.

Being my very first rugby game, I was extremely excited to go. We had to take a train to the Olympic Park, which let us off right in front of the stadium. The design of the stadium was awesome, because the outside structure reminded me of a roller coaster how it goes up and down, up and down.

Right when I walked into the stadium, it reminded me of being in America and going to a sporting event. There were huge screens all over with thousands of people filling in wearing their team colors. I am not sure how, but we had amazing seats. I realized that buying tickets for sporting events in Australia is not like buying tickets for sporting events in America. In America, the more you pay for a ticket, the better seat you have. In Australia, there is only one type of ticket you can buy depending on what category you fall into (adult, child, student, senior). Our seats were right in the middle of the field, and 19 rows up. Another thing I noticed was that sporting events in America attract a lot more people. The stadium was not even close to being half full, and there were only 22,700 people that attended the game. When I go to the Saints football games in New Orleans, the stadium is packed and there is probably triple the amount of people.

It was awesome going to a rugby game, especially in Australia, since I am taking a sports class at Sydney Uni. We learned about the differences between National Rugby League (NRL), Rugby Union, and the Australian Football League (AFL). It took me a while to remember all of the rules, but eventually I started to understand what was going on. Luckily, my friend Katy, who is originally from England but moved to the United States when she was 16, sat next to me. Since she grew up there and rugby is popular in England, she explained most of the rules to me and what was going on. I learned that a "try" is the rugby equivalent of a touchdown in American football. You get 4 points for a try, and then you get to kick a "field goal" for 2 extra points. To score the 4 points, you have to actually touch the ball in the try zone (endzone), or it does not count. The player holding the ball would dive into the try zone when they were about to score. I also learned that a team has 6 tries to run the ball down the field for a touchdown, and if they do not do it, they have to kick the ball to the other team. I know it is possible to score 2 points by kicking a field goal, but I am not sure of the rules of when you can do it. Passing in rugby league may only be in a backward or sideways direction. Also, when a player gets tackled, the ball is still in play, which is different than American football. A player from the other team can strip the ball out of the hands of the player on the ground, but I think they only have so much time to do so while the opposing player is on the ground. After getting up from being tackled, the player with the ball has to send it backwards behind them, usually done by putting the ball on the ground and using the bottom of their foot to roll it backwards.

As I said before, I definitely caught on by the end of the game, but I still have a lot of learning to do about rugby. Of course, I had to root for the Sydney Rabbitohs, even though their mascot was a dinky rabbit that did not look very fierce at all.

The referees wore pink shirts, in which I feel that in America would never happen. Since football is supposed to be a tough, man's sport, wearing pink even if you were the referees would not be acceptable in society. I loved the pink shirts though!

It was also interesting to see that there were only about 5 players sitting on the bench to sub in. The entire game, I think each team only substituted their players 2 times each. These men play the ENTIRE game for 40 minutes halves. Since there are 13 players who are out on the field for each team, they were getting super tired by the end. People wearing either green or orange shirts would run out during the middle of the game to bandage up any wounds or to give these players water. I feel that if they substituted their players more, the men would not be as exhausted by the end of the game or even during the game.

I could tell there were different positions, but was not sure what the role of each of the positions were. All I knew was that when a team was close to scoring, the entire stadium would scream and cheer. The way these men were built was very interesting to observe because their legs were HUGE, but they were not very tall. Each of them wore short-shorts and a very tight jersey, which is something very different from uniforms for men in America!

Overall, I had an amazing time watching a sport being played that is different from American sports. I am going to a Australian Football League game with my sports class in a month, and am excited to see the different rules and the way the game is played. Here are some pictures of rugby in action!
The Rabbitohs ended up losing 16-0, but I still had an amazing time.

This will be the last blog entry until about May 2nd, since I leave tomorrow morning at 3:45 a.m. for NEW ZEALAND! I will be gone from April 20th- May 2nd, but when I get back, expect some adventurous blog entries with new experiences! I miss you all and have a good 2 weeks!

Heaps of Love,
Heidi

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