quicko: further thoughts on rugby league

I watched the Manly game on Friday night.  (It was a huge game!  This guy who had been Manly's winning coach the last couple years (they won the premiership, which is like winning the Super Bowl) abandoned the team and went to another team that paid him more money.  Friday's game was Manly against his new team.  Very dramatic!)  Now I know a few more things about rugby league, so I thought I'd update you:

--There are six tackles before the ball switches sides.  A tackle is literally a tackle.  This leads me to wonder if perhaps a "down" in American football is the same concept (someone literally being pushed down?  it would make sense ...), but as I know nothing about football (except precise field measurements also used by marching bands), I'm really not sure.
--Players are only allowed to pass the ball backwards.  This is interesting because if you want to throw the ball, it's a bit counterintuitive -- you've got to throw it the opposite way than you really want to go.
--They're very big on the offsides rule -- after each ... tackle, I think ... each team must be on its proper side of things.  This means it's nothing like, say, ice hockey or broomball where you always keep some players on defense close to the goal and others on offense farther out.  Rather, it's a whole lot more like Red Rover in terms of overall set-up.
--There's this thing called a scrum where all the guys stand in a circle and look entirely too close for comfort.
--The so-called "Gorgeous George" is really more of a "Big Lovely Teddy Bear George" than a precisely glamorous figure.
--Cherry-Evans is the new golden boy of the Manly Sea Eagles, though other players such as the brothers Brett and Glen and another guy named Jamie Lyon have been playing solidly with the team for much longer.  However, Cherry-Evans has been offered a better contract (4 years instead of 2ish), which is a cause for dissension among the players and fans.
--The Manly Sea Eagles are a widely disliked team, partially because they are beating everybody else and, in a more long-term, deep-seated sort of way, because there's a bit of an attitude of the silver spoon about them.  

However, Manly won the game Friday night by 12-10, and it was a very good game.  Tense, nerve-wrackingly nail-biting!  But they pulled through in the end and it was all very exciting!