National Rugby League

Following my attendance of an AFL game about a month ago, I decided to check out the other game in town, the National Rugby League (NRL).

AFL (also known as Aussie-rules football) is played throughout Australia, though it used to be primarily a Melbourne-based league.  Few years back, the AFL decided to expand so they moved a few Melbourne teams to other parts of the country.  Now, there is an AFL team in pretty much every bigger city in Australia.

On the other hand, NRL is played primarily in News South Wales and Queensland.  It is also played in Northern England, where the sport originated from.  NRL is also referred to as Rugby League in Australia, while elsewhere people know it as Gaelic football.

The third type of rugby played in Australia is Rugby Union, which is the typical international style rugby that is played around the world.  I believe that Australia has a Rugby Union team that they send to international competitions, but I really don't know if they a national league playing by Rugby Union rules.

I attended the NRL game where Melbourne Storm played Wests Tigers, to a crowd of 24,000 spectators.  Westies are committed fans, so the spectator grounds of the oval where the game was held  were full.  The game is played in two halves of 40 minutes each. 

You win by scoring more points, and you score points by running into the end zone with the ball, or by kicking the ball through the rugby style goal posts.  You can only pass the ball back by throwing it, and you can kick the ball forward.  A team has only six attempts to score, and if they don't the other team gets the ball.  Each attempt is stopped by a tackle.  No pads nor head gear is worn, but the tackling is not as brutal as in NFL.  Tigers won the game with a score of 26 to 16.

The sport did not appeal to me.  I think I prefer AFL as it was a much quicker game, with much more action and scoring.