As mentioned in another thread, BBC America is showing selected matches from the Six-Nations tournament this year. It involves the six nations of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy. Don't ask me why Italy are in there, they're rubbish. Anyway, the games are on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings at around 11ish (it varies depending on where the game is being held). This week's game is on Saturday, and it's France vs. Ireland at 11:30am CST, from the Stade de France in Paris.
Folklore says that the sport of "rugby football" was born when William Webb Ellis, a pupil at the Rugby School in England, picked up a soccer ball and ran into the opponents goal with it. This isn't true, but it's fun, and the World Cup trophy is named after the boy. Regardless, the sport came to North America with the European settlers, and has since morphed into what you call football. Watch it, and you will see the family resemblance. Imagine American-style football, without a forward pass and where the ball is never dead, and you've got rugby.
It is 15 on 15 game game of two, 40-minute halves with the clock always running unless the referee takes time off for irregular stoppages (injuries, for example). The object is to move the ball down the field and touch it down to the ground behind your opponents goal line, which runs the width of the field. Sound familiar? That is called a "try" and scores 5 points, with the kick after (conversion) being worth 2. Some infractions result in a penalty kick, which if put between the uprights like a field goal scores 3 points, and it's 3 point for a drop goal. There are no hash marks to limit the width from which kicks are taken, so the kicker can be forced to try and make from the side line.
The ball cannot move forward from any player's hand (that's called a "knock on" and is penalised with a scrum), so it is passed laterally as the team in possession tries to find or make a seam in the opposing defense. There is no blocking allowed and it is only permitted to tackle the player in possession of the ball. Only players on their feet are allowed to play the ball - if a player is tackled in possession, he has to release the ball, hopefully to be taken up by one of his upright teammates. The ball can be punted forward at any time, which teams will do to gain field position while typically sacrificing possession.
Normal play is that a player will carry the ball into a tackle, go to gound and feed it back to his supporting teammates. This sets up what's called a "ruck", where the defense will try to push the offense off the ball to regain possession. The team in possession will hold them off and then cycle the ball back and across the field with a lateral pass to then set up another ruck, hopefully a little further down field. This will get repeated until they have worked the defense out of position such that there's a seam or an overlap, and one of the (running) backs will try to burst through, or they'll whip the ball out to the wings for one of the true speedsters to get around the outside. If the defense holds, the team in possession may punt for field position, rather than risk losing the ball close to their own goal line.
Offside. This seems a little complicated at first, but it's really quite simple. The ball sets up an offside line, like the line of scrimmage, but it remains in force at all times. Thus, a player is only allowed to join the play if he is coming from his side of the ball. If he comes in from the side, or from behind the play, he is offside. The only time a player is allowed to be active when in front of the ball is when he is joined to the player with the ball, either in the scrum or in an impromptu scrum, called a maul. Players are constantly left on the wrong side of the ball as tackles go in and the ball moves, so they must cycle back to their side of the ball before they are allowed to re-engage. If the ball is punted forward, the same applies in that only players who were behind the kicker are allowed to challenge the catch (like a kick off in football).
The Scrum. Certain infractions result in rugby's most recognisable event - the scrum. This is set up when a formation of 8 players on each side push on each other, shoulder-to-shoulder with heads interlocked. The team winning the infraction gets to put the ball into this scrum, and this is timed so that the ball is hooked back into their half of the formation. Both teams try to shove the other backwards, and you will likely hear the crowd shouting what sounds like boos, but is actually "heave". As long as the ball stays in the scrum, no one on the opposition can touch it. If they can move forward, dribbling the ball soccer style, they can go as far as they like, even to the score line (this is called a "push over" try).
That's about it. There are other rules that will become apparent while watching, and the referee wears a live mic which really helps a lot. You can hear him coaching the teams to avoid committing infractions - and this is good refereeing. The game should flow, and without a wise and wary referee, it can turn into a stop-motion horror. FYI, the referee will point to the side winning the foul, not the side who committed the foul. He has two linesman to help, who are very necessary as there are 30 players to keep an eye on, most of whom will be up to some form of no good when no one's watching.
