On Saturday, our licensing agency took Nick and I to see the England Rugby team play Argentina at Twickenham, which is to Rugby what Lord's is to cricket. Although I have been repeatedly told rugby is 'the sport they play in heaven', I don't quite get it...it's really quite strange to watch when you don't understand the rules or strategy. However, it is interesting from a cultural point of view - people who support rugby here (rather than football/soccer) defend it as being a more physical, 'manly' sport, and yet it is very much the sport of 'public' (private) schools where they still call the umpire 'sir'. Football (soccer), on the other hand, is a populist sport where they not only abuse the umpires, but quite often touch them (which I found quite astounding after AFL). And the physicality and agressiveness is very much played out off the field - on the field, footballers are constantly being accused of being soft and taking dives for penalties.
Anyway, apparently the game was a particularly poor example of rugby as the England team are currently crap and someone told me that Argentina was the equivalent of England playing Uganda in cricket. Suffice to say, Argentina won, 25-18.
Nick enjoying cold beer on a very cold day - much like being at the MCG!
England are in the white shirts and Argentina in the pale blue and white - where's the clash strip?
