How do you explain rugby to an American? Brian Rose, whose family comes from the American West, puts that question to England rugby player James Haskell in this clip from their 2016 London Real interview. Haskell’s answer starts with the NFL and ends with car crashes.
It is a lively explanation of what makes rugby special, why he thinks it is in some ways safer than American football, and what a professional player’s body goes through every week of the season.
▶ Watch the full episode: James Haskell – Rugby Entrepreneur
Start with the NFL
Brian asks what a newcomer should look for: what does the ordinary viewer miss that a player sees? For Haskell, the easiest way in for Americans is the NFL. Fans love running plays, he says: backs finding holes, showing footwork and agility, and making yards. Rugby is all about that.
The big difference is flow. In American football, a player is tackled and the play stops. In rugby, the ball is recycled and the game carries on, tackle after tackle. With no forward passing allowed, everything goes backwards, so he suggests watching the footwork, the handling, the collisions, the speed of the game and the natural flair of the best players. Instead of short bursts, “you’re playing for 80 minutes.”
No pads, but fewer blind hits
Many Americans, Haskell says, look at rugby and think the players are mad for not wearing padding. He sees it differently. In his view, the NFL is more dangerous, because players are hit from several angles at once, often without seeing it coming, and some lead with their heads. Concussion, he says, is a bigger issue there.
In rugby, he explains, you are usually tackled by someone in your field of view. You might be caught from behind after making a break, or hit while looking for the ball, but there are fewer of the unseen collisions that come in American football, such as having your legs taken out while you jump for a catch. That is his view as a player; injury risk in both sports has been widely studied and debated.
Five or six car crashes a game
Brian asks how different it is to be on the pitch rather than watching on a big screen. “It takes me three days to recover from a game,” he says, and it is “pretty much hell.”
Players wear GPS units in the backs of their shirts that track not only distance covered but also the force of every collision. Some of those impacts, he says, are comparable to car accidents, so by the end of a match your body may have gone through the equivalent of five or six of them. Then you have a week to recover before doing it again.
Peaking every week
He contrasts this with combat sports. MMA fighters take heavy collisions too, but they build up over three or four months to peak for one fight. Rugby players have to peak every single week of the season and put themselves back together in between. Brian adds that fighters who are knocked out are also stood down from fighting and sparring for weeks, a luxury rugby players rarely get.
The clip ends with Brian asking how Haskell prepares on match day: does he go quiet and serious like many NFL players, or the opposite? The answer is in the full episode.
What to take from it
For anyone new to rugby, Haskell’s advice is simple: watch it like a never-ending running play, and look past the ball to the footwork and the collisions. And when players get straight back up after a big hit, remember the week of recovery ahead.
Who is James Haskell?
James Haskell is a former England rugby union international who played as a back-row forward. He spent most of his club career at Wasps, won 77 caps for England and toured New Zealand with the British and Irish Lions in 2017. Since retiring from rugby in 2019 he has become a broadcaster, podcaster and entrepreneur.
In his full 2016 London Real episode, Rugby Entrepreneur, he talks with Brian Rose about rugby, training and building businesses alongside his sporting career.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: James Haskell – Rugby vs NFL: How To Explain Rugby To Americans
0:00 Brian Rose: Back to the game. If you were trying to show someone for the first time, say an American, say from Las Vegas or Arizona, where my people are from, and you sat them down and said “this is why this is a beautiful game”, what are the kinds of things you would tell them to watch for, to look for? Obviously it’s a contact sport, more so than any other sport that’s played in England, right?
0:16 James Haskell: Yeah, much more so.
0:17 Brian Rose: There’s no contact in cricket or in football. What should they look for? What does the normal person not see about rugby that you see?
0:24 James Haskell: I think the best way to explain rugby to Americans is to compare it to the NFL. People love the NFL because they love running plays. They love seeing running backs running through holes, showing great footwork and agility, and making yards. Rugby is all about that. It’s the constant flow of action. Obviously in the UK, soccer is the number one sport, but I’ve found that rugby holds much more interest, because you see big collisions.
0:49 James Haskell: In the NFL you have a play, someone gets tackled, it stops. But in rugby it’s continuous. If someone gets tackled, the ball will be played, then we tackle again, then we tackle again: constant big hits. This guy’s constantly running, looking after the ball. Obviously you can’t pass forward, so everything’s passing backwards. But you would look at the footwork, the use of the ball, the collisions, the speed of the game and the natural flair of some of the players as the attractive features. And unlike the NFL, it’s continuous. You’re not working in 30 seconds, you’re playing for 80 minutes. Obviously there are fouls, like the yellow flags in an NFL play, when play stops, but it’s pretty continuous.
1:24 Brian Rose: When we watch it on the big screen at home, versus being right there down on the field, how different is it? Is it hard to imagine how physical it is, or how much the hits add up over that 80-minute time period?
1:37 James Haskell: Yeah. It takes me three days to recover from a game. It’s pretty much hell. A lot of Americans look at rugby and say: oh, you guys are mad, you don’t wear padding. I actually think the NFL is more dangerous, because you’ve got guys getting hit from multiple angles, blind hits, people leading with their heads. You’ve got a bigger issue of concussion over there.
1:54 James Haskell: In rugby, you’re going to get tackled in your field of view. And if you make a break, you might get tackled from behind, because you’re running that way. You might get a blindside hit where you’re looking for the ball and someone hits you. It is aggressive, but you don’t get those unseen collisions. You’re not jumping up in the air to catch a ball and someone’s taking your legs out from underneath you.
2:18 James Haskell: But when you’re down there, yeah, the collisions are pretty big, and they build up. We wear GPS units in the back of our shirts that cover your distance on the field, but also cover collisions.
2:29 Brian Rose: G-forces.
2:30 James Haskell: Yeah, G-forces, all that kind of stuff. And some of the collisions in the game equate to having car accidents. So by the end you could have had five or six car accidents, or your body goes through the same stress. And then obviously you have a week to turn it around, and you’ve got to play again, and it’s just non-stop. Whereas even MMA fighters, who obviously have the collisions, have a three- or four-month build-up into a fight and peak once. We have to peak every week and get ourselves back together.
2:54 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s a different game, and I want to talk about MMA in a bit. They also have to take breaks when they’ve been knocked out: they can’t fight or spar for 30 days, 60 days. You guys can’t do that. I remember hearing an interview with an NFL quarterback, and his wife was saying that when it comes to game day he’s just quiet, because he’s preparing for something really serious, and all the joking goes out the window. Is that the way you get on game day? How do you prepare yourself? Or do you do the opposite?
