If there is one thing that football and rugby fans both hate, it is when comparisons are drawn between the two sports. Nevertheless, that is exactly what I'm about to do.
In the UK, early adopters of gridiron have for years had to live with taunts of, "Isn't it just rugby with pads?" Meanwhile, rugby fans have traditionally looked down on the American code with a smug bemusement at the game's slow pace and technicolor gaudiness. It's all been very much, "My dad could beat up your dad."
The unfortunate truth for both sets of fans, however, is that the two games are siblings. Like all forms of football, each went down its own path early in life to develop distinct personalities, but at their core they both come from the same place. This will be especially obvious this weekend as the NFL season culminates with Super Bowl LI and the European international rugby season begins anew with the 2017 Six Nations. With the two sports playing major events on the same day, it's a rare chance to drop the hostilities and appreciate how intertwined they really are.
The two sports undoubtedly owe a lot to each other. In fact, without one another—along with trains, British schoolboys, some Canadian university students, an American president, and an abundance of maimings—neither might exist today at all.
As with any good American sports story, we begin in fifteenth century England. All variations of football—from gridiron to association, rugby to Aussie rules, Canadian to Gaelic—evolved from the massive medieval games that formed the interesting bits of school history lessons. These were essentially mob games where entire villages would turn out to kick seven bells out of each other under the pretence of getting an inflated pigs bladder into a rudimentary goal, and the only real rule was that murder was frowned upon.
Read more on VICE Sports
Advertisement