SCRUM!

No, for those of you back home, I’m not talking about agile development, I’m talking Rugby!

In addition to learning a lot about Tanzania & Africa, I’m finding myself learning a ton about the home countries of my teammates. Today, I saw my first full Rugby match, courtesy of my teammate from New Zealand, Mike. He’d been talking about the All Blacks, Rugby, and their rivalry with Australia ever since – well, before we even got here. Today, the Tri-Nation Rugby championship (the tri-nations being South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand) took place between the Wallabies (Australia) and the All Blacks (New Zealand). Mike had worked hard to make contact with some of the local Tanzania National Rugby players in town and found out that the game would be on at a swank little expat hangout called The Players Club.

Before arriving, we rolled up to a gated community – the nicest I’ve seen yet in Africa and our cab driver had to sign-in before being let through the gate. We found out later that this area, whose houses range from $1300-$2000/month, is where the United Nations people live.

The club itself was a nice little hang-out, which, in addition to having a bar/restaurant, had a gym, pool, tennis courts, and giant playground for kids. Almost everyone there was from another country. I saw a few people we’d met earlier in the month, like Peter Lindstrom, the head of Hoopoe Safaris who I interviewed for my work with AWF and the Australian owner of a nice restaurant in town called Stiggy’s.

Rugby, I have to admit is a pretty exciting sport compared to American Football. I was confused at first when they didn’t stop playing after the first tackle – I expected a commercial break, but instead I got 40 minutes of almost uninterrupted, hard core, all-out men attacking other men. It’s fascinating. They wear no padding like our guys in the NFL and I’m sorry, but Richie McCaw (All Blacks captain) makes Brett Farve look like a fairy.

For those of you that, like me until today, have never seen a game, here’s the scoop. It’s very similar to American Football. A guy kicks the ball, there is tackling, and the scoring is similar in that by reaching the end zone you can score a total of 7 points if your kicker makes the free kick. Differences as I saw them:

1. You can’t pass forward, you can only kick and run forward.
2. When a tackle is made, the game continues until one of the teams wrestles up the ball and continues down the field.
3. The clock is not stopped for penalties – only injuries, which I’m told are often faked to slow the game down the bit.
4. There are two 40-minute halves.
5. In the end zone, you have to get the ball on the ground before the score counts.

All-in-all, I had a great time watching the game AND the All Black won after a very close game – you can’t beat that! I think the only thing I didn’t like about Rugby is that I’m not going to have easy access to games when I get back home!