Rugby for fat kids

I was asked at a party the other night whether or not I liked sports. By which, of course, the interrogator mean American sports: real sports. It is more or less assumed by people, having established that I'm English and not, in fact, Australian, that I'm deeply passionate about football and tea. I am pretty ambivalent about both as it happens, which apparently makes me not a 'proper' Englishman. This is in a nation of people who describe themselves as Scottish because their great grandfather was from Gretna Green. Anyway, returning to the question in hand, I usually reply to this by saying something vague about having seen a Superbowl or two, and mentioning that I'll watch college basketball when there's nothing else on. On this particular occasion I had, shall I say, enjoyed a certain amount of hospitality, and gave a more honest reply. 'Apart from finding it skull-crushingly tedious, I think that American football is just rugby for fat kids'.

Wrong answer. I knew straight away that this person was a football fan. Worse still, instead of being offended by my comment she was convinced that my naive opinion was the result of not understanding the finer points of the game. My next two glasses of an otherwise quite palatable Pinot Noir were therefore ruined as the chess-like intricacies of the offensive line were outlined. In all fairness, I eventually did concede that I had been a little hasty in writing American football off as rugby for the less-athletic. It is in fact rugby for retards.

Sporting legend has it that many years ago a pupil at Rugby school picked up the ball during a game of football (soccer, to some of you) and thus was the game of rugby invented. I don't know how true that is - after all, if all it took to master rugby was to handle a football the Argentinians would be the lords of the try-line.

Diego Maradona - frustrated rugby genius, or just a cheating twat?

I don't know the origins of American football either, but I speculate that if one tried to organise a game of rugby at the Special Needs Olympics, the result would not be dissimilar to a Superbowl: a bunch of players would run into each other, and one of the more dexterous of them would lob the ball to the other end of the field.

Next Saturday, the English 2007 Rugby World Cup campaign starts with a game against the USA. Unfortunately, I shall be unable to watch it because the college football season has begun, and the only thing on ESPN will be a bunch of fat retards running into each other, whilst one of the more dexterous players throws a ball to the other end of the pitch. If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then it is clear that Iraq is being lost in the stadia of the mid-west.

Update

...a bunch of players would run into each other, and one of the more dexterous of them would lob the ball to the other end of the field.

Having just kept abreast of the first half of the England/South Africa match, it appears that I was prescient in describing the England team's 'stuff it up your jumper' style of play. Sadly, I have to work this afternoon, so reaching for the bottle is not an option.