It depends what you mean by basically. At a very basic level they are both sports where players try to carry a large ball over a line, and the other team tries to tackle them. Beyond that the similarities quickly end.
Rugby is played continuously, play doesn’t stop for tackles and the team on the pitch remains there for the entire game (barring a few 1 time substitutions). Rugby players are expected to transition from offence to defence and back as the game ebbs and flows, and be fit enough to remain caught up with the play most of the game.
The emphasis in rugby is on retaining possession of the ball through subsequent plays and tackles (phases) until such time as you can exploit an opponent’s defence to score.
The emphasis of football is to get the ball 10 yards in 4 plays. And the way the game is structured all the players are expected to be far more specialized into niche roles, and coordinating a lot of specialized skills into short, highly intense bursts of effort. Nobody in football is expected to operate for more than about 5-10 seconds at a time.
As for why one caught on and the other didn’t. It probably doesn’t actually have a huge amount to do with the rulebook of either game, or the similarities or differences therein, beyond the fact that there’s probably only a niche for one major big-guy-tackle-people-move-ball type sport in any given place and time
It depends what you mean by basically. At a very basic level they are both sports where players try to carry a large ball over a line, and the other team tries to tackle them. Beyond that the similarities quickly end.
Rugby is played continuously, play doesn’t stop for tackles and the team on the pitch remains there for the entire game (barring a few 1 time substitutions). Rugby players are expected to transition from offence to defence and back as the game ebbs and flows, and be fit enough to remain caught up with the play most of the game.
The emphasis in rugby is on retaining possession of the ball through subsequent plays and tackles (phases) until such time as you can exploit an opponent’s defence to score.
The emphasis of football is to get the ball 10 yards in 4 plays. And the way the game is structured all the players are expected to be far more specialized into niche roles, and coordinating a lot of specialized skills into short, highly intense bursts of effort. Nobody in football is expected to operate for more than about 5-10 seconds at a time.
As for why one caught on and the other didn’t. It probably doesn’t actually have a huge amount to do with the rulebook of either game, or the similarities or differences therein, beyond the fact that there’s probably only a niche for one major big-guy-tackle-people-move-ball type sport in any given place and time