Dubai: There's an age-old sporting jibe between Brits and North Americans that rugby is a ‘real' man's sport because American footballers use shoulder pads and helmets.
But nobody's saying that now to Michael Brimley and Markas Morton of the Kuwait Scorpions, despite the two Americans being severely outnumbered by rugby purists in the Gulf Men's League of the Dubai Rugby Sevens.
Former National Football League (NFL) players with the Carolina Panthers and Miami Dolphins, Brimley and Morton, both now in their early 30s, went through college ranks and reserve levels of their preferred contact sport but joined the US Army due to injuries.
With no American football in Kuwait, where they are now stationed, the imposing duo both play prop and provide the sting in the tail of their Scorpions' rugby side, which lost in the final of the Gulf Invitational Open last year. Brimley, a former linebacker, said: "I've still got a lot of love for contact sport and rugby is a little easier on the body. There are less collisions than NFL or at least the collisions are not that great."
Speaking of the similarities and differences between the two sports, he added: "Speed is the main thing. There is a little change in speed. I mean American football is fast, but with rugby you need endurance.
"In terms of running, catching, forcing a miss and quick decisions it's pretty similar, but I'd say tackling and speed is very different."
Morton said: "It's stop-start and tactical in American football, but rugby is constant, especially in sevens. You don't get time to breath or think as much.
"The Brits give us that ‘but you guys use padding' line all the time but we don't get annoyed. It's a completely different sport. You're protected by your pads so you can run through someone. But in rugby you have to hold up a little — we haven't got the hang of that yet!"
Brimley added: "We lower our shoulder and they say we hit too hard, but I take that as a compliment. We've had 10 to 15 years of American football so we're not built to let up, we're built to destroy whatever we hit."
With this tag-team in the ranks, Gulf Men's League sides are eager to avoid the Scorpions in the draw, but having only fallen at the last hurdle in 2010, they could well be around in tomorrow's finals.
