Teach a squad of your rugby players the rules of American football and pit them against an opposing team with protective gear and watch the bodybags fill up. Your insipid, tiresome squabbling over which athlete is tougher is typical of your European inferiority complex and belongs on a childrens’ playground.

I can’t speak for Apeking or uptight (and I don’t really care for rugby) but if their squabbling over the toughness of athletes is so insipid, inferior and (God forbid, worst of all!) European then why do you feel the need to chime in proving that American football is the toughest of all? Although in fairness I heard its quite rough. I read somewhere that Teddy Roosevelt once tried to ban it, you know?

Yeah its a children’s playground and you’re the biggest kid on the block. Don’t anyone forget it.

http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/fa-cup/biography/history-of-football

Iraqi Soldiers have beaten their British military trainers and mentors from 1st Battalion the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment in a friendly five-a-side football competition held to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

The British soldiers from 1st Battalion…

I have no doubt that both rugby and American football players are exceptionally large and tough. However, American football is overwhelmingly more dangerous a game to play. Hence, the protective gear. There were, in fact, so many deaths in high school and college football when it was just starting out that Teddy Roosevelt threatened to ban the sport.

Teach a squad of your rugby players the rules of American football and pit them against an opposing team with protective gear and watch the bodybags fill up. Your insipid, tiresome squabbling over which athlete is tougher is typical of your European inferiority complex and belongs on a childrens’ playground.

Now run along and play with your spade and bucket.

our center forward was from Iraq. His family had escaped the Iraq/Iran war, I think. He was a ball hog and a hot head and scored most of our goals!

Ordinary1 on January 5, 2008 at 8:47 AM

My teammate was Iranian. That’s what I get for posting before the coffee kicked in!

The rest is true. He was great player when controlled his temper.

Maybe Steinbrenner needs to hear about this?

You call football “Soccer” from an inverted abbreviation of our name for the sport, “Assoc. Football”.

The throw-the-ball you call football we call “Wussy Rugby”.

“Rugby” from the British sport it is derived from, “Wussy” because of the kilos of padding and helmets you wussies seem to need in order to play a game of Rugby.

madne0 on January 5, 2008 at 3:41 AM

…and tennis.

Association Football dates back to the 19th century, and it’s just a historic accident that it became the dominant form of football in the UK (and later the world). Various types of football existed in the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, so it’s origin really isn’t British, either.

Association rules date back to the 19th century but it was played for centuries before that. It was so popular in the Middle Ages that it was banned because it was distracting from archery which was important for defense. How is its popularity a historic accident? There was no other form of football in the UK. The fact that it was played in ancient cultures (Rome, Egypt) only reinforces my point.

The brits were instructed to lose I should expect. No need to stoke tensions among the savages.

BL@KBIRD on January 4, 2008 at 8:52 PM

Now, now, Bl@bird. As long as the savages aren’t living up to their faith, they are mostly decent people like people everywhere. It’s just that you don’t know when they going to follow their religion and go kill someone or mutilate a girl’s genetalia or some other neat-o outcome of them following their faith. And let’s remember when they are following their faith, they are doing just what Bush and Romney think they should do.

Iraqi troops turn on their British trainers and crush them

Funny headline. You do know what “trainers” are in Brit-speak, right?

Don’t the brits specialize in that insect game?

bnelson44

Not really. The British have the sad distinction of being pretty much crap at every game they invented. Football (aka soccer), rugby and cricket.
Heck, they even managed to miss the cut to the Euro 2008 championship.

Speaking as a rugby player with 23 years experience – I would not want to see too many NFL players in an opposing pack, Apeking. Ali Williams aside, I think some of the defensive ends/Defensive tackles in the NFL would be the Second Row from Hell. And don’t get me started on some of the running backs or linebackers playing at flanker…ouch.

Soccer or football its still boring.

EnochCain on January 4, 2008 at 9:38 PM

Yeah….the only true sport worth any time at all, either watching or playing, happens on ice.

After skating, playing or coaching hockey for over 30 years, I never tire of it.

All the rest? Pfffffft!

LOL. Actually they “mistakenly call it that” everywhere else in the world but here. ;)

tickleddragon on January 4, 2008 at 8:43 PM

So you’ve never heard of Canada and Australia?

Football is the name of a sport played throughout the world for several centuries. Seizing on a colloquialism (soccer, deriving from an abbreviation of Association Football) does not entitle you to appropriate the word football or pretend it has an American origin.

aengus on January 4, 2008 at 9:28 PM

Association Football dates back to the 19th century, and it’s just a historic accident that it became the dominant form of football in the UK (and later the world). Various types of football existed in the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, so it’s origin really isn’t British, either.

Football is a game where you kick a bloody ball with your bloody foot. I can’t think of a better word for it than football.

Apeking on January 4, 2008 at 10:05 PM

Except that every popular kind of football except soccer makes significant use of the hands.