The equipment and the field

If you’ve watched either of the games on TV, the first thing you might have noticed is how different the players look. In American football, players must wear a helmet, shoulder and chest pads, leg protectors and a mouthguard. It’s like a modern-day suit of armor. Meanwhile, over on the rugby pitch, players usually only wear a mouthguard (also called a gum shield). And their kit, of course. 

A rugby ball is one centimeter shorter than an American football but is fatter in the middle. And the playing fields are different sizes too; American football fields are about ten meters shorter and more than 20 meters narrower than the larger rugby pitches. 

The rules

First, the team sizes are different in rugby and American football. There are 15 players allowed on the field at a time for a rugby union team, but just 11 at a time on an American football team. A rugby game is longer too: 80 minutes with two forty-minute halves vs a 60-minute game divided into quarters in American football. 

One major difference between the sports is that you cannot pass the ball forwards by hand in rugby. In American football, one forward pass per play is allowed. In both games, players can kick the ball. 

As we said earlier, the aim is to score as many points as possible (the only sport that seems to be an exception to this is golf). In American football, players try to score touchdowns by carrying the ball over the opponent’s line. In rugby, players aim to score a try (it’s the same thing!) by placing the ball on the ground over the opponent’s line. In both sports, players can also kick goals. If you want to learn how to use sports vocabulary in new ways, take a look at these idioms.