Holistic Guidance - Rugby Skills, Tactics & Rules

Second only to soccer as an internationally loved field game, the hard-hitting sport of rugby is growing in popularity in North America. This spirited guide to the game is packed with superb, full color, action photographs of great players from around the world demonstrating fantastic rugby tackling, scrummaging, rucking, mauling, kicking, lineouts and running. The authors, experts with international experience as players and coaches, describe the many tactical and skill aspects of the game: Scrums; Passing; The Lineout; Kicking; Rucks; Backline Attack; Mauls; Blind-Side; Attack; Tackling; The Try; Backline Defence; Rules; and Running.

High-impact photographs and concise, no-nonsense text combine for an action-packed guide to the modern, skillful game that is top-class rugby. Rugby Skills, Tactics & Rules will excite, entertain and enthrall players at all levels and rugby fans young and old. A 32 page section details the rules, plus sidebars throughout relate great, historic moments from international rugby play.

The book is loaded full of colour photographs of rugby players in action, mostly from New Zealand domestic matches and international matches. One thing I would have liked is more diagrams supporting the text (even in exchange for some of the photos). There are hardly diagrams at all.

The text is well-written and easy to understand.

The text is simple but quite serious, hence being rugby an "informal" sport, a better explanation should be devised for some particular events during the match. The lineout is a typical example: in fact the rule, which permit an aided 6-foot plus gentleman to hover in the air waiting for the oval, must have been thought up by a three-quarter who flew Harriers (the famous vertical landing fighter airplane!). This strange engagement is characterized by a devastatingly human exertion, that is the pathological damage this may cause the unsuspecting jumper's groin when his shorts is pulled sharply upwards by two herculean "thrusters"! So far for the tactics!!

Another amusing rule too seriously explained is when the front rows collapse during a set scrum. The refree (the usual scapegoat for italian fans!!!) gives a penalty against the prop that goes down first. He may be the less potent of the two, the more tired or simply could quite easily have slipped, but no!, the sanction is quick,steadfast and irrevocable: he did on purpose, shame on him! Since the international refrees are not robust specimen of human race, with large diameter trunks and necks, they wrongfully suppose that above huge necks there is little capacity for gray matter. So the modern prop will use this misconception to his advantage when there is a scrum nearby the Opposition try line. Thus, by all means, usually illegal, he will check the opposite prop's thrust while collapsing, therefore automatically gaining a penalty kick from the best position ever. That's what we call a teamwork!!

That said, I will recommend this volume to anyone interested in this wonderful game, but getting in touch with its rules for the first time.