Welcome to Rugby league, The Greatest Game of All!

Welcome to Bleacher Report’s brand new Rugby League section of the website!

Over the coming weeks I will be posting several articles as an introduction to ‘the other kind of Rugby’. You’ll learn about the rules in the game, and the teams and countries that are involved. The history of Rugby League and other various subjects are too numerous to mention right now, but they will be covered at a later time.

Rugby League is a contact sport that is played largely in Australasia and Europe. It is similar to American football, in that the aim of the game is to get the ball into the scoring area on the opposite side of the field.

In a game of Rugby League there are 17 players on each team. 13 players are on the field for each team at any one time, with 4 players on the substitute bench to be used as replacements throughout the game.

Each game goes for a total of 80 minutes with two 40 minutes halves, plus up to 10 minutes of extra time if the scores are tied.

There are four ways to score points in a game of Rugby League:

Try – This is the main way of scoring points. Each try is worth 4 points and is achieved by placing the ball on the ground with downward pressure inside your opponents in goal area (similar to the end zone in NFL).

Goal – After a try has been scored, the team gets a chance to score a goal. This is also known as a conversion, and it is worth 2 points. A goal is scored by kicking the ball off the ground (usually on a kicking tee), and making it travel in between the goal posts and above the cross bar, which are placed at both ends of the field.

Penalty Goal – This is similar to a normal goal as it is also worth 2 points. When a team is given a penalty, they can choose to attempt a penalty goal from the spot that the penalty is given.

Field Goal – This type of goal is only worth one point, but it can be kicked at anytime during the game. The player must dropkick the ball (drop the ball on the ground and kick it just after it bounces), and the ball must travel in between the goal posts and above the cross bar.

To be continued...