Sports 1:

Whether or not you know it, New Zealand is an extremely sportive country. In fact, more than once I've found it a good introduction to new people:

Me: "Hi, I'm Brandt"
Them: "Hi Brent, I'm Matt."
Me: "It's Brandt."
Matt: "Brad?"
Me: "Here's my name-tag."
Matt: "Oh, Brandt. So, what sports do you play?"

The frequency of this exact conversation is almost disturbing. Anyways, back to the point. Sports. So, I'm writing today about two sports that I kinda knew something about, but not really. They are commonly known as Cricket and Rugby.

So, Cricket. Cricket has been around in some form or another since about the 13th century. A sport that's been around that long must have some strage allure, n'est-ce pas? And indeed I find the allure to be quite strange, in that I don't feel it at all. The basic structure of the game is like a one inning baseball game: One team pitches first and attempts to get all of the opposing team's members "out." This is accomplished by catching a ball that the hitter hits before it (the ball) hits the ground. The batter in the meantime attempts to hit every ball thrown at him in such a fashion as to not hit it at one of the fielders while attempting to hit it as far as possible to score the most number of points possible. So far, it's baseball, right? The only real difference is that the field is an oval, that there are 11 batters for each team, and an inning ends when either 10 of the 11 batters is "out" or 300 legal pitches have been thrown. Then it's the other team's turn to hit. Needless to say, a "short" game takes the entire day. The ENTIRE day. Some people have called Cricket "the only sport more boring than baseball," this gives you a small idea of the amount of time that it takes to play a game. Admittedly the game is extremely interesting when there are about 30 pitches left by the last team, but it takes 11 hours to get to the last, exciting, 30 minutes of the game. My personal cost-benefit analysis shows this ratio to be in the boring end of the excitement spectrum.

Now for Rugby. It's faster than Football, more dangerous than Football, but, unfortunately, I also find it to be more illogical than football. The reason for this is simple: In Rugby, one is not allowed to throw the ball forward, only backward. One can kick the ball forward, but one must also attempt to recover it upon the fall of the ball. Also, field goals can be kicked at any time (though it's close to impossible to score during an actual drive, they are more often scored after trys (touchdowns) or on penalty kicks), but they are kicked from the sidelines of the field, at an angle. The ball is also kicked from a flat angle, the long side of the ball is parallel with the ground. One thing about Rugby that is absolutely awesome, is the fact that the clock does not stop. We all know that there is a local time flux that occurs within football games that causes the last 2 minutes of the game to last for 40, we all acknowledge (and some love) this impossible quantum mechanical flux. In Rugby, there is no such flux. A game is set to take 80 minutes, and barring painful acts of God, the game damn well takes 80 minutes. So, while I have rather grown to like Rugby, I Still prefer football.

Now for my disclaimer: The above views expressed are soley the opinions of the writer, and in no way reflect the collected opinions of 20th century Fox or its affiliates.