Word: sport
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...Rugby people are rightly proud of their sport. Compared to its closest relative, rugby league, the game has a genuine international presence and a certain sophistication to its forward play. At least in theory, it's also less predictable. But as a spectacle, league has left it for dead...
...curb the influence of the referees. The last six weeks confirmed that too many of them think they're the most important guy on the field. It's one thing to maintain control, quite another to look for reasons to blow the pea out of the whistle in a sport that lacks flow at the best of times. A rugby revival depends on convincing the top whistleblowers that a Test match isn't the time to show off their grasp of every obscure law in the book. You don't halt a Springsteen concert because the man sang...
...That growing interest, and the skyrocketing revenues it generates, is rapidly making Planet Rugby a smaller place, as players are lured across borders and oceans to internationalize the sport as never before. As with soccer, England remains the prime destination of globe-trotting stars: The French team beaten by England in the semifinal included the mainstay of London pro club Wasps, Raphael Ibanez, as well as hirsute lock-forward Sébastien Chabal of Sale. And scores of players from Britain and Ireland play in the French league, where they'll soon welcome among them South African full-back Percy...
...Nowhere is the social makeup of the national rugby team more of an issue than in South Africa, where the sport which had been a totem of the white minority in the apartheid era still remains almost entirely composed of white players. That has sparked passionate debate over whether rugby's national squads should replicate the socio-ethnic demographics of the societies they represent. A laudable goal for all nations on earth, perhaps, but one that would make those four New Zealanders playing for Japan a little tough to explain...
...asked his teammates. For many, the orange pass event was the highlight of the afternoon. Each team member had to hold an orange under their chin and pass it to the next member of the team: a new take on the term “contact” sport. “This is how I learned I was gay,” said Samuel L. T. Walsh ’09. The games culminated in the ever-popular balloon stomp, combining participants’ athletic prowess and innovative defensive stratagems. “Those balloons are too small...