6/26/20 Who Knows How To Play Rugby?

    This comes out of nowhere, I sent Javalina out to help me cut the grass in the afternoon.  I told him to give it a quick cut and I would follow along and trim the edges.  I had gone to Home Depot and finally found the right trimmer line for our very cheap trimmer.  While I was in the garage trying to figure out how to open the package, one of our neighbor guys stopped walking his dog and got Javalina's attention to the point that the mower shut off.  The man was older than me, I would say late 50's, but he was trying to get a feel for how old Javalina was and then I heard him say he was coaching a youth team and an adults team.  He made a surprised face when Javalina said he was only going to be a sophomore in high school, but he seemed excited anyways, specially when he asked if he had played football, and of course Javalina said yes.  By this time, I had walked out of the garage and was next to my boy and Wife just happened to arrive and she was hovering around, getting off her car.
    The guy is trying to recruit more kids to his teams to play rugby, which I said "I heard rugby, so I rushed out of the garage to hear what you have to say."  He introduced himself and mentioned his wife's name and pointed to the house they live in, which we already knew because he walks with two huge dogs that look like a pair of white lions with all their hair.  He said he would be sending us a flyer and that they play their season starting in January.  Javalina said he would very interested, which I followed that "yes I would love for my son to participate if he wants to, but only if this whole corona virus thing is gone or there is a vaccine by then."  He seemed confidant in saying "yes, I am sure that by January all that will be settled."
    So now, to figure out how rugby is played.  There are two teams and each has depending on the version 7 to 15 (traditional) players on a field, 3 to 8 forwards and 4 to 7 backs.  The goal is to move the ball past some goal lines but no forwards passing is allowed.  The ball looks like an oversized football and although there are no downs like in football, there are phases, and a phase goes until the ball carrier is tackled or knocked out of bounds.  There are six phases allowed before the ball must be kicked or given to the other team (I think).  There are also various ways to score, including running the ball into the goal (called a try) and forcibly touching it to the ground worth 5 points, kicking it through the goals after a try (called a conversion) and is worth 3 points, a penalty kick given to a team by a referee, and a drop kick which is also worth 3 points and can be done anytime while on the run, but the ball must bounce once on the ground before being kicked.  These point values might be for rugby union, which is the rugby with less than 15 players, less points are awarded in rugby league which is the one with 15 players I think.  All this is still kind of confusing, but given that we are trapped at home with our quarantine and it is currently raining hard (Friday morning), I will try to watch a couple games or tutorials and figure this game out.