I knew this game was going to be rough from the first two minutes, when a man roughly the size of Montana was sitting in the medic’s chair in front of me, blood gushing all over his face and flowing down to the grass. This game clearly isn’t for the faint of heart or the dainty, but at the same time it was riveting and I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the field.
In a way, this adult rugby game reminded me a lot of the Roman Gladiators, where huge crowds would gather just to watch two men rip each other’s heads off. I never understood why violence was so interesting and captivating, but for some reason, there’s something about the human mind that just loves it. I’ll never understand it, but I was definitely caught up in the drama.
Not only is this game crazy, but it also has a ton of history, especially surrounding aboriginal/Black civil rights from the 1960’s. It was interesting that this league was specifically called “aboriginal,” because I would honestly speculate that there were about an equal number of black and white people playing on the field. The entire game was completely integrated and I didn’t understand why it was considered to be “aboriginal” at all.
That being said, it was pretty cool to see grown men playing a serious sport together. I feel that a concept like this isn’t very accepted in America, where most of the men the rugby player’s age would be too busy with full-time jobs or just not in shape enough at all to play contact sports. The most involvement they seem to get in the states is by watching a sport on TV, not actually rolling around in the mud playing, breathing, and living it like these men do.
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