American football is a relatively new sport. It was invented in the 19th century. Anyone who has watched a game or simply played American football can infer that the sport originated (at least in part) from rugby. The first college football game was held in 1869. However, the basic rules of modern football were invented in the mid-1880s by Walter Camp, a famous Yale University rugby player.

Now, American football players wear about 10 kilograms of protective gear. This includes shoulder pads, helmets and lower body protection. The team's quarterback is the most important player in the role of throwing a pass to the receiver.

In rugby, only passing the ball back is allowed, and generally no protective devices are worn (some players wear light shoulder pads. And believe it when we say that if you think scrum caps provide some protection (except for a feeble attempt to prevent colliflower ears, it would be better to raise an Afro like Colin Charvis!

Head to Head Comparison

American footballers are often cited as being the toughest athletes, but it’s time to let the numbers do the talking.

Some players in American football have absolutely huge sizes, and some players exceed 300 lbs. Therefore, it is easy to say that the biggest players in soccer will be heavier than rugby. But what's interesting is that the difference in size is actually quite similar in terms of height and weight from different positions. At least that's what the available research tells us about comparing elite rugby players to top-level college football players.

The New Zealand Super Rugby team, which has an average age of around 26, averaged 187.6 cm in height and 108 kg in weight. Soccer players were 186 cm and 108 kg, but the weight deviation was much greater. 스포츠토토 Thus, although there are more extreme body sizes in American football, overall size differences tend to be even, and rugby union players tend to be slightly larger on average in this small sample.

In Rugby league, due to less need for specialist body types for line outs or scrummaging, and an increase in demand for overall fitness across the park, they tend to be on average a little shorter and 8-10kg lighter from what we can piece together from the research…

Speed and Strength

Figuring out which athletes run fastest can be a bit tricky. While maximum speed is a good indicator, we should also keep in mind that American football players wear a hefty layer of padding. The best way to compare the two is to take stats from the NFL training combine, where players carry out a series of timed drills without any padding. For comparison purposes, we will use the speed stats from Jarryd Hayne, Australian rugby league superstar that tried his luck in the NFL back in 2015.

The highest speed of 40 yards (36.6 m) in the NFL Combine was 4.31 seconds in 2016. A boarder look at the speeds of all positions shows that in a study of elite level rugby union players, the average time of 40 m (about 40 yards) was about 5.3 seconds. The time measured across all positions at NCAA Division I level, the highest level of college football, was 4.74 seconds!