Is there any truth in the rumour that shinty is sort of like hurling only without the excessive concern for the personal safety of other participants? (I’ve played neither, so I’m just asking.)
AFAIK shinty and hurling both have the same root but in shinty you can’t handle the ball and the stick is a different shape.
Both games are quite physical and there’s no “excessive concern for the personal safety of other participants” in either sport.
Oh please…none of these mentioned compare to the true leader in brutal sporting contests!
I first read “hurling” as “curling”, and started to think that maybe that big slidey rock had hidden death-dealing powers.
When we were kids, we would each put our hand on an electric burner on the stove, and turn it on.
First one to take his hand off lost.
There is no manlier sport than rugby league, you’re right there, although you need a set of the ol’ brass danglers to play union as well. I’m guessing from your use of the “S” word that you’re in the US, do you play rugby league, or union? (If you’re talking about the game keeping moving I reackon it must be league.)
Yeah, a good game of rugby union Southern Hemisphere style {I’m a Kiwi, so I’m biased} where they move the ball around is fast and exciting, but a slow game {ie one played by England}, where they shut down the backline play and just kick for penalties is excruciating. League is much faster - no pauses for scrums and lineouts - and more brutal: the State Of Origin is about the closest you’ll see to a gladiatorial contest. I remember one final a couple of years back where one of the players had his scalp split open: they patched him back together on the sidelines with an office stapler, and he went back on to play. That’s manly.
Manly sports? And nobody mentioned boxing or Ultimate Fighting Championship? Sports where the sole purpose is to beat your opponent down so well they either quit or lose consciousness?
I guess I don’t have a grasp of the definition.
I went to watch a rugby match my freshamn year in college, saw a guy get a concussion on the pitch and was wandering around confused. They got him off the field and gave him 2 cans of beer. One to drink and one to hold on his head. After he finished the beer he ran back out onto the pitch and kept playing.
That’s when I decided I had to play that game.
My two most memorable “manly” rugby experiences were 1)playing in a tournament during -76° wind chills and 2)playing with a dislocated jaw, and having to pop it back in place myself after the the match was over because I had no health insurance.
Coldfire would probably also include my “playing rugby with a goose carcass for a ball” story as well.
No one’s mentioned Aussie Rules yet? Imagine rugby, sans the good behaviour (or any sort of rules as far as I can tell).
My husband plays rugby (he also used to coach the women’s team at Michigan State many years ago). I’ve seen some pretty spectacular injuries at his games. One guy got a huge gash in his head. His buddy sewed it up with a needle and thread from some drugstore sewing kit and he was right back in the game. At a college tournament, this cute, petite girl had her eyebrow ripped off. She went to the medical tent and got some ice. She didn’t go right back in the game, but I think that was more to do with the stricter blood restrictions than in the recreational leagues.
My husband’s buddy played a whole game with a collapsed lung. He said afterward that he’d wondered why he felt so winded.
Biased is the mot juste - England scored only about sixteen, seventeen, eighteen tries in the Six Nations this year, they lost to France entirely on the strength of six Yachvili penalties and to Wales and Ireland by kicking fewer than the opposition, and none of the Southern Hemisphere victories in WC finals have been try feasts - didn’t South Africa win it by the odd drop goal in '95?
Of course it’s unfair to bring up the World Cup when you’re talking to a Kiwi - they last won it in 1987 back when our idea of training consisted of having a couple of pints of beer and a fag before the match and most of the team only met forty-eight hours before the game, and they’re under the mistaken impression that they still have a divine right to call themselves world champions. Sad, really.
Truth in that. Back in '87 we were the only real professional team in the world, amateur regulations notwithstanding: now that everyone’s gone pro, the All Blacks are just another good team, which hasn’t quite sunk into our national psyche yet - and League’s made huge inroads into our national sport in terms of popularity since then, especially in Auckland where the Warriors are based. Nice to see Wales finally fielding a decent team, though, for the first time in 25 years {My grandmother was Welsh, you see}.
Yes Rugby League is the game. I have played lots of sports and used to referee union and I am sure that RL is the most physically demanding team game on earth. In the average RU international the ball is only in play for 20 odd minutes, allowing for getting ready for scrums, lineouts and kicks at goal. This time includes over 60 rucks and mauls where the defence stands back maybe one meter.
In RL there are few stoppages and the defence is required to stand back 10 meters. The routine tackle in a RL game is some big guy running one-on-one into some other big guy from 20 meters away. The skill levels of modern players are absolutely bewildering, 20 year old Kiwi Sonny Bill Williams has invented his own tackling technique that involves commiting the ball runner to go one way and then launching himself at the poor bastard. It requires incredible strength, timing and discipline but in a few years you will see lots of kids doing it.
Well, I am strongly biased, but gymnasts have a huge weight to strength ratio, and they have to be really tough. Most of my girls (average age about 8) can do over 60 straight-body pushups without stopping. In warmup they have to sit in splits (or over splits) for over 10 minutes. Their training session is 3.5 hours long. They’re pretty tough!
How many of you manly men can do over 60 pushups without stopping?!
That was last year I think – my gf insists I watch State of Origin with her. IIRC he wasn’t patched up on the sidelines, the first aider stapled him on the field, and it made the newspapers about how it shouldn’t have been shown on tv.
The worst injury I saw was in rugby union where they did that thing where a guy is boosted up by his teammates to catch the ball. The tower fell over and the guy on top landed on his head in a piledriver. I was wincing with every replay!
I know a guy who had, as he put it, a “testicle crushed” while playing rugby. He now has one ball.
He’s in good company: Budge Pountney (sp?), Scottish international, suffered the same injury.
Not me for a start. OTOH, put any of 'em against me in the front row of a scrum, and they’d be leaving the field in a wheelbarrow if I was trying. And even in a not-too-serious club game I used to invariably pick up bruises that took a week to fade, and I bet they don’t. 
Women’s gymnastics isn’t for manly men. But then it doesn’t seem to be for womanly women either, judging by what I see on TV. I mean, a sport that requires its participants to look like 8yo girls on steroids… :dubious:
Isn’t Rugby League the form of the game that involves proctologic exams in mid-play?
http://mirrors.meepzorp.com/unsportsmanlike.interference/
It certainly explains why in League the play keeps moving along (wouldn’t you move pretty quickly if someone shoved his finger up your ass?), and why the backs stay back (would you go near someone who was intent on shoving his finger up your as?).
I’m not certain whether one is dealing with tactics or with strategy when one has to discern the difference between suffering a wedgie or suffering a finger up one’s bum, but either way the whole concept of one man shoving his finger up other men’s asses brings the term “manly sport” to a new level.