On becoming a rugby fan

We love sports in this household -- well, American sports, that is.

In the old days before kids, my husband and I avidly followed and rooted for our favorite baseball and hockey teams (Phillies, Nats, Flyers). Shane still reads about baseball pretty much all day every day, and the few minutes he's not reading about baseball he fills with hockey news.

In the fall, I love watching Sunday afternoon football. There's nothing better than having soup bubbling on the stove, cider in hand, cheering on my man Joe Flacco as he completes a long pass for a touchdown. That's my bliss.

And in the spring, I'm a sucker for March Madness and college bball. Love me some college basketball, though I now, embarrassingly, have to wear my reading glasses while watching it.

So moving to New Zealand has been something of an adjustment for us on the sports front.

They have American football and basketball, hockey and baseball in New Zealand, but they're not huge sports by any means. I don't even think they're on par with the following for professional soccer in the U.S.

So what do they follow? Rugby is the clear favorite, while cricket, soccer and netball fill in the rest of the year.

That doesn't leave us with a lot of options. And since cricket doesn't make a bit of sense to me (does it to anybody??), soccer season hasn't started yet, and netball just doesn't have the same cache as basketball -- by process of elimination, we're rugby fans now.

What is rugby?

It's a bit of a mashup between American football and soccer -- only instead of passing (or kicking) the ball forward, players must lob it in a backward motion. There's a lot of passing, punting, tackling (though not as rough as the NFL) and goal kicks, but there's none of the glorious long passes that make the NFL so exciting. It's much more a team sport to play as it takes everyone on the team working together to move the ball to the goal line.

And it's actually super fun to watch in person.

We checked out a game a few weeks ago between North Harbour, our local team, and Otago. The level of play is professional but similar to a AAA baseball team, as above these athletes are those in the international SuperRugby competition. And then the All Blacks -- the national representative team -- reign above them all.

It was the first game of the season, a rainy night and the stadium was fairly empty. But the crowd was amped, and the game was good. Our team had a runaway first half, scoring most of its points by drop goal (kicking the football-like ball through the goal posts). We left at halftime as it was a school night, but found out later Otago made a comeback in the second half and nearly won the match. Final score was 19-17.

I hope to talk the kids into checking out another game this weekend, this time between Auckland and Northland at a bigger stadium in the city. If I'm able to bribe them into going -- a soda usually works -- I'll report back and let you know how our rugby fandom is coming along.

#sports #rugby #AmericaninNewZealand