KlinkerAg11 said:
If someone was wanting to get into Rugby would this be the league to follow?
Are most games available to stream or rewatch?
How easy is it to learn how the game is played?
Complete newbie here to the game, but it's always interested me. Now seems like a good time to learn and become a fan.
I think it's a good league to start with. If you have ESPN+ they do a really good job of retaining on-demand replays for quite awhile after the matches. Although they didn't win last year's World Cup, New Zealand is still the most dominant county in the world at this sport and most of their national team talent is spread out amongst the 5 clubs in this league. Other good options would be some of the big European leagues such as the English Premiership or Pro14, but I don't really follow them and don't know where they stand in the COVID environment.
If you have ESPN+, the games are available for quite some time to stream replays. With the time zone difference I don't even bother trying to watch live. If live is important to you, the European leagues would be better options but I don't know what channels/packages they are available on (if they've even resumed yet).
Major League Rugby is the new American upstart including a few Texas teams, but 2020 was cancelled after COVID. If learning the game though, the production value of the bigger international leagues make them easier to follow and pick up on.
Assuming you know American football, 90% of the game is pretty easy to pick up quickly (examples below). As with many sports, there are a lot of rules nuances that can take much longer to learn.
No forward pass of course is a main difference, so the lateral is the primary ball distribution method. Try = Touchdown, but is worth 5 points instead of 7. Instead of breaking the plane, you have to maintain possession of the ball to ground within the end zone to be awarded the try. Conversion kicks are uncontested and worth 2 points so max points after a try remains 7 (hard to quickly explain, but I really like rugby's rules on where you have to take the kick from instead of it being limited to only within the hash marks). 3-pt options are available through penalty goals (uncontested and off a tee from the spot of the penalty) or through drop kick (legally allowed and American football but pretty much never used). Possession isn't as critical as in American Football with field position gaining more importance. That's a pretty basic list and doesn't cover many of the intricacies but is enough to understand most of what is going on in a game.
