Basketball has plenty of action and results. During the season it was like a bunch of robots going up and down the court. Throwing in a mid season championship is driving some ratings.
And now to really get myself in trouble!
Same goes for ice hockey. Lost of moving, few results. Itâs really the same game as soccer when you get down to it. Just a smaller playing field, and with an impossible to see puck. But it doesnât back away from full contact like soccer does. That gives it a little interest.
âPeter
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Well, you guys could take a look at Rugby. Sort of looks like USian football, at first glance. Then you notice the differences. They actually play the game. Once the ball is put in play, play continues until one side or the other scores, or the ball ends up under a pile of 30 men and canât be moved. Doesnât matter if the ball is dropped. Doesnât matter if the other team takes possession of the ball. They play. The game clock runs 80 minutes, and it runs, except for the break between halves. Somehow, a game in Wales ended up on USian TV some years ago, but that was an aberration, as all the USian money is in football, and the money is the only thing that matters to TPTB.
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Rugby. Football without padding and without stopping.
Thereâs probably a reason itâs mainly played by Aussies and Brits. No sense of self preservation. 
âPeter <== definitely ducking and running after that one!
One of my FB friends commented, a few years ago, after seeing Rugby on TV for the first time: âitâs like cage fighting. there are no rulesâ. I offered there are rules, like no forward passing, but they play the game, instead of spending the vast majority of the time standing around.
Steve
Oh myâŠyou found the YouTube with the most lame-azz HAKA of all timeâŠlook at the ones for modern games. Scary.
Rugby was the game played at my high school and my husbandâs main sport right through med school and a couple of years after. As I mentioned upstream, I was messaging a group of high school friends and one of my reassurances to the bloke whoâd commented on Miami Dolphins having to play in the cold, after pointing out it wasnât actual football or rugbyâŠand the players only have to spend a matter of seconds before they get to scamper back to the touch line and bundle up all cosy warm.
The game (rugby) looks very different nowadays than back in the ultra amateur era in the 1970sâŠwhere even writing books about the sport invited sanctions. Different rules and all. Rugby is actually quite popular here and elsewhere around the World outside of UK and âThe (other) Coloniesâ Our primary care doc is a big fan and a good bit of our appointments are taken up with her and dh nattering onâŠmy husband being a former Rugby Superstar and Legend In His Own Mind.
Also an opportunity to see one of the greatest tries of all time (Gareth Edwards, scrum half) and the run up to it starting with the late J.P.R. Williams (as of just a few days agođȘ) He was still a medical student back then, I thinkâŠor just graduated. St Maryâs. Husband actually played against him in Hospitals Cup matches (between all the medical schools within London University) a few times.
American football looked different in the 1970s. The average game ended up with massive pileups of bodies on every play. It was boring and slower. The camera followed the game.
I was looking for one I saw a few years ago: one try that must have gone on for a couple minutes as the ball kept changing teams and the whole mob stampeded back and forth across the field, repeatedly, before someone finally scored. I saw a game, broadcast live, from Wales, a few years ago. To my unschooled eye, looked about the same. Did not look like a highlight reel, but the players werenât standing around idle 95% of the time either.
As for the HAKA (yes, I looked it up), well. What are we watching for? Anyway, here are the All Blacks, last year.
More than anything else, that HAKA reminds me of the pre-attack chant in âZuluâ, the audio of which was used for the Germans in âGladiatorâ.
