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I love how foreigners can spend all day talking about how Americans are blood thirsty, warmongering, uncultured Neanderthals, but if we try to protect people who are playing a game we're considered little girls.
As one of the very few people on this board who have competitively played both rugby and American football, I can assure you that rugby is not a tougher sport and the tackling is not harder.
For starters, there is no blocking in rugby, which means if you're not directly involved in the action you're not going to get hit. With football, regardless of your involvement in the action, you're going to get hit in some form on every play. Blocking also means more blindside hitting which causes for awkward collisions and dangerous landing positions which without pads could lead to serious injury. Since we're only playing a game, why would we want to try to hurt each other?
In addition, the rules for tackling in football are much more ambiguous than in rugby. Rugby tackling requires you to wrap your opponent and actually tackle him. In football, you can do pretty much everything besides punching and kicking your opponent to tackle him. Again this leads to a greater chance of head and neck trauma and if measures can be taken to assure that people can play this game and have fun while being kept safe, why wouldn't you take them?
I don't understand why foreigners are so obsessed with proving rugby is a tougher game. They're not the same sport and they have drastically different rules and circumstances. You're free to have your ignorant opinions and nobody can stop you but I really think you'd all benefit from doing a bit of research and experiencing both football and rugby for what they are: games.
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