Badger’s Rugby Compendium is a humorous glossary of over 500 terms, slang and jargon, all the lingo from the inner world of rugby explained with witty definitions and illustrations to amuse the dedicated fan and enlighten the rugby-curious.
If you had never seen a rugby match, say you were born and bred on Pluto but you were fluent in English, on tuning into a match you might ask yourselves three questions: i) Why are all these people rolling around in the mud? ii) Why are they so cross with each other? iii) Why is the commentator talking in Klingon?
Many people let rugby pass them by as they do cricket and other sports built upon a complex set of rules. To understand the rules, to take some pleasure from a sport, as anything else in life, you must understand the language by which it is described. To go one level deeper and take joy from the sport and immerse yourself in its culture, traditions and nuances, you must have a working knowledge of its jargon and slang. What do they say? The limit of my world is the limit of my words.
‘He’s a hoisted a bomb there, buried him with a snotter, gone in for the jackal, hands all over the egg, given him a facial, and kicked off the handbags. He’s getting pinged here and he’s got himself ten minutes riding the pine or I’m Bill Beaumont.’ There’s only one reaction a rugby stranger might have to that: ‘You what?’ I mean, no wonder the rugby-curious viewer keeps flicking the remote. The aim of this little glossary of rugby union terminology, banter and vernacular is to offer some light entertainment for the devoted fan, but also a little enlightenment for the uninitiated and bemused.
By:
Niall Edworthy
Imprint: Badger Books Limited
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Volume: 4
Dimensions:
Height: 198mm,
Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9781068585487
ISBN 10: 106858548X
Series: Badger Sport Humour
Pages: 125
Publication Date: 22 September 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Aerial Ping-Pong … Attacking Rugby Back into Traffic … Bury Camp In … Cuff, Off the Dark Arts … Dump tackle Early Pressure … Eye-gouging Facial … Front Up Gain Line … Gumshield Hacking … Helter-Skelter Ice Bath … Knows the Way to the Try-line Latcher … Lump, Big Made to Look Silly … Mulligrubber Nause … Numbers! Obstruction … Ownership, Taking Pack … Pylons Raking … Running on Empty Schoolboy Mistakes … Subs Suit Tackle Suit … Turnstile Defence Uncontested Scrum … Varsity Match Wales … Zinzan
Niall Edworthy is one of the UK's most prolific authors and successful ghostwriters. A former reporter for broadsheet newspapers and the international wire agencies AFP and Reuters, he has covered many major sporting events including two Rugby World Cups. Niall began writing books in 1997. He is the author or ghost of almost 50 titles, most for the big publishing houses, many of them for well-known names (actors, soldiers, musicians, sportsmen & television personalities), others for ‘ordinary’ people with extraordinary stories. He has written in a wide range of genres, mainly Biography, History and Sport but also Humour, Natural History and recently, in Fiction. His first novel, Otto Eckhart’s Ordeal, was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Best Published Novel Award 2021.
Reviews for Badger's Rugby Compendium: A Humorous A to Z Glossary of Rugby Terms, Jargon and Slang
""Outstanding! Who’d have thought a dictionary could be useful and very funny? A book for all rugby fans."" Will Greenwood, England World Cup Winner
