NPR

For no particular reason this thought entered my mind earlier this week..... What sport (other than rugby league obviously) shares the most traits with rugby?

I thought rowing fit the bill and tbh I was thinking foremost in terms of the similar demographics in that rowing is perceived as a posh/upper middle class sport.
However, there is also an overlap in the sense that it is a true team sport and very physically demanding.

What other sports would you say have a lot in common with rugby?

The one that comes to mind for me is "paying a homeless person a tenner to hit themselves on the head with a hammer".
The amount of CTE, Early Onset and Motor Neurons is probably the same, between homeless people hitting themselves on the head with a hammer (for a tenner) and rugby players.
The onlookers and supporters would be much the same type.
The denial and the " they know the risks" type arguments are the same (even though both participants have lots of severe brain damage from it, and should definately have stopped like after 2 years, we expect them to have rational thoughts bumping around up there, and think in a detached and objective way.. from the extreme culture, in which they find and have lost themselves.).

Yup..for me back alley homeless selfy inflicted whackamole and rugby is pretty much identical.

Wrestling. Same ears.

In America, field lacrosse... minor sport played by a lot of posh kids, tiny following, don't think it has contact, but people are probably likely to confuse 'lacrosse' with the other, rougher type (box lacrosse) the same with Union/League, so you have to specify which if just talking about it. Has roots much older than the codefied version that took off in the 1800s. Had a chance to gain popularity, but organizers missed a beat back then while other sports raced ahead.

It's American Football - moreso than rugby league in fact.

Very few team sports have elements within the game that not all the members of the team do or indeed could do without specialist training that only those members of the team are required to do. Rugby is nearly unique in this respect.

Handball Has a lot of common stuff.

Kawazaki wrote: Sat May 13, 2023 7:40 am It's American Football - moreso than rugby league in fact.

Very few team sports have elements within the game that not all the members of the team do or indeed could do without specialist training that only those members of the team are required to do. Rugby is nearly unique in this respect.

Agreed, but massive difference is the stop-start nature (though Union is closer than League in this regard with set pieces)

I'm sure we all know that forward passing wasn't a thing until the early 20th century, but did we know that was also true of ice hockey until about the same time!? After WW1, if I'm not mistaken.

laurent wrote: Sat May 13, 2023 7:41 am Handball Has a lot of common stuff.

Especially in the way you thread a pass to somebody running a good line. Played with an Italian guy and I couldn't understand how he seemed to "get" running lines having never played rugby before but it came from his time playing handball.

Kabbadi.

Water polo

Whatever it is, it's not Tiddlywinks.

Gumboot wrote: Sun May 14, 2023 7:36 am Whatever it is, it's not Tuddlywunks.

Fixed.

Skill set wise - American football/ice hockey.

Club house atmosphere - rowing at pro level, at amateur level cricket has far greater diversity both in terms of race and class but there’s not tonnes to separate your whiter more middle class cricket clubs and their rugby equivalents. When trying to recruit blokes who’d played all four team sports for the uni club we used to say ‘we’re like the rugby club but we won’t make you dip your nob in tabasco sauce’. Hockey same sort of principle