Rugby's Strangest Matches: Extraordinary but True Stories from Over a Century of Rugby (Strangest series)

By John Griffiths

Book Overview

From bestselling author John Griffiths. Jam packed with over one hundred years of strange rugby history! The perfect gift for the rugby fan in your family! Rugby fans will delight in this extraordinary collection of astonishing but true stories from the past 130 years, which reveal a bizarre and hitherto uncelebrated side to the sport. Here you'll find, amongst many other bizarre events, the Irish international who arranged his marriage in order to play against England, the match in which a team of top soccer players beat their rugby counterparts at their own game, the riotous encounter that meant that particular fixture was subsequently abandoned for seven years, the international match in which an entire Wales side were sent off and the unknown player who was capped for his country due to an administrative mistake. Rugby's Strangest Matches is a fascinating compendium that is sure to amuse and entertain. Other titles in the series: Football's Strangest Matches (9781907554087), Cricket's Strangest Matches (9781907554094) and Golf's Strangest Rounds (9781907554070)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1905798164
• ISBN13: 9781905798162
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Anova Books
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

interesting, but not necessarily strange

What you get here are about 150 anecdotal accounts of rugby matches over the past 130 or so years. Many are interesting, some are quirky, some are humorous, but others are rather forgettable. The descriptions run anywhere from 5-6 lines to several pages. You can read about a match where father and son both played, a match with brothers on opposite sides, things of that nature. These you might not find all that strange. On the other hand, however, are accounts of matches where the referee clearly was unfamiliar with the rules--an example being where a referee called a player offsides for holding the ball for a kicker on a very windy day. Scoring rules have undergone many changes, and there have been matches where confusion abounded about points being scored. There are tales that rival Mike Tyson's famous in-match dining habits ("The battle of Waldron's ear"). You'll also read about the player whose shorts were mostly torn off during a tackle attempt--and be reminded that play definitely doesn't stop in that event. So there's a lot of good material here--evn though some of the stories are not as interesting.