Rugby For Dummies

by Mathew Brown, Mathew Brown, Patrick Guthrie

For every rugby enthusiast at every level of interest! Discover why rugby is North America's new favourite pastime. Now, you can learn and love the game of rugby as a player, coach, or fan. From drills and shape-up exercises, to helpful tips on safety and injuries, this book is packed with information for every rugby admirer. Explanations in plain English. The Dummies Way® Get smart! @ www.dummies.com

Genres: Sports, Nonfiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Becky Loader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for explaining the game of rugby.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to rugby, for spectators or for players. It's organized so the reader can choose easily which chapters are relevant or interesting and skip ones that aren't. I'm never going to be a referee or coach, for example, so I skipped or skilled chapters intended for those.

The most fascinating thing I learned is that the numbers on a player's jersey indicate what position she is playing. I also enjoyed reading about the history of the sport and various international competitions, especially the U.S. Women's Eagles team.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a very informative book. I'll keep it next to me as I've started to watch rugby more often. It was really more of a guide to play rugby than to watch it but getting clarification on all the rules that made no sense to me was great.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but VERY dry... Took forever to get through. You'd be better off just watching games and googling what you don't know

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I can obsess about something else for a while.

[Cass · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good information about rules and general rugby knowledge, but the rest of it is kind of dry and outdated by now.

[Mohamad Sharudin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a good and simple way to understand the game .

I played rugby before many years ago and picked up this book to revise so I can understand the game better as I watch the 2019 Rugby World Cup. The author is very concise and clear in explaining the game . However I wished that he could talk more about the rugby scene in Asia.

[Gary Braham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several months ago, I watched the movie "Forever Strong" on Netflix, and this gave me an interest in the sport. I had a limited knowledge of Rugby before that, having a roommate in college who played it, but I never really got involved in it. I have a former co-worker who played for a local club team, and I had always meant to go check it out, but until recently, never have. With my knowledge of the sport being so limited, I wanted to get a book to learn more about it.

At first, I was reading very quickly, it went from topic to topic fairly quickly, so I only had to read for a few minutes to get to something else. Which kept me interested. I did have a hard time wrapping my head around everything, from the rules to the layout of the field to the phases of the game. It took a while for it to make a whole lot of sense.

There was a lot of attention paid to the International game, and this book paid just about equal attention to the USA and Canada. I didn't really have much interest in International Rugby, and certainly not Canadian International Rugby, so I ended up finally skimming parts of it when it looked like it was going to take me forever to finish the book.

Like all the books in the "For Dummies" series, you aren't necessarily meant to read every page and every chapter. I was able to find the information I was looking for. But the book wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I wanted something that would get me to my first match, and be able to watch from the sidelines and have some clue as to what was going on. This book provided a few chapters on that, maybe even more than a book that would have specialised specifically on that.

[Adrian Rush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent, but not great, overview of a sport that's more complex than it looks at first glance. The book is a little sparse on explaining penalties, for one thing. The title also isn't clear -- this is about rugby union exclusively, and there's not even a mention that rugby league exists as a separate code. Not a bad book to have at your side while you're watching a match, but don't expect to learn much more than the bare basics.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great way for players who are new to the game to learn the (extensive) rules involved in a game of rugby. It's also a good reference for seasoned players, and it contains lots of fun facts and history of the sport.

[Les Gehman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to the sport of rugby. It covers the rules, strategy, and history of the sport in simple, clear language. Now, I need to re-read it after watching a few matches to really cement my understanding of the game.

[Kimberly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pretty clueless about the rules of rugby until I read this book.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm skimming this one right now. Good reference book too!

[Karl Haddock · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a great book that told me a lot. The problem is that I know half the stuff in there

[Jason Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent primer on how rugby is played.