1.
A BRIEF COMPARISON
OF US FOOTBALL AND
AUSTRALIAN RUGBY
By Tim Hornibrook

2.
Introduction
 Tim Hornibrook currently serves as an executive
director in Sydney, Australia. His two sons play
Australian rules football, and his wife manages
one of the teams. In his youth, Tim Hornibrook
played rugby and attended Tulane University in
New Orleans, Louisiana, on a football scholarship.
Professional football has ranked as the most
popular sport in the United States for several
decades. Rugby, meanwhile, currently is one of
the most watched and well attended sports in
Australia. The two sports share a number of
similarities as well as several key differences.

3.
Football and Australian Rugby
 During a game of American football, each team fields
11 players at a time. Teams are considerably larger,
including a number of offensive and defensive
specialists, and coaches can substitute players
throughout a contest without limitation. The general
goal of a football team is to progress down field into
an opponent’s end zone. At the professional level,
teams play four 15-minute quarters, with a brief break
at halftime.
Rugby combines many of the physical aspects of
American football with the continuous running of
European football.

4.
Conclusion
 A comparison can even be made to basketball, as
teams constantly transition between offense and
defense. Similar to football, teams try to run or
kick the ball into an opponent's zone to score. A
rugby team fields 15 players at one time.
Substitution rules vary from tournament to
tournament and league to league, though seven
substitutions is the generally accepted limit. More
importantly, once a player has been substituted
out of a rugby match that player cannot reenter
the game, with the exception of an injury. Rugby
games last for 80 minutes and are broken up into
two 40-minute halves.