Test your rugby knowledge and check out action Friday

Rugby isn’t ‘football without pads.’

If you are boning up on your sports for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, you may want to head to Roswell on Friday to check out the Georgia Youth Rugby Championship. For many of us, the extent of our knowledge of the sport consists of those cute shirts that Lands End and Orvis sell.

But here are a few tidbits about rugby that you might find interesting:

The U.S., which is heading to the summer games in Rio de Janeiro, is the defending gold medalist in rugby (we took the gold the last time rugby was an Olympic sport, in 1924).

And another thing, rugby is making something of a splash right here in football land.

Longtime Roswell resident and realtor Daniel Pretorius, who also happens to be youth director of Rugby Georgia, talked about why the sport is taking off.

Did you play rugby growing up?

I played rugby as a youth in South Africa before moving here 23 years ago. I’ve been involved with high school rugby for the past six years and now I’m youth director of Rugby Georgia. What is rugby, exactly? It is one of the oldest American sports, brought over by the Europeans. American football and basketball are its spinoffs. Rugby is really the father of those two sports. Short answer, it is not football without pads. A few years ago, Pete Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, started implementing rugby tackling techniques with his team. He has a video that explains why the rugby tackle is more efficient and so much safer than the traditional football tackle. We take the head out of the collision. So you are a safer sport? We don’t want to use other sports to say how safe our sport is. We are a contact sport and there are always scrapes and bruises. Our youth boys’ team played 10 games this season. We had one concussion — and that happened in practice.

Do you want to compete with football?

We do not want to compete with football. We are in the South and we know what football means here. We see ourselves as partners to football. We want football coaches to entrust us with their athletes in the off-season so we can teach them safer rugby tackling techniques. One of the great things about rugby is that there are two 40-minute halves without stoppages. When we give players back to their football coaches, they are so much fitter.

Why is rugby becoming popular?

Certain sports have become so popular that kids never get into the game. With rugby, everybody gets to play. If we get too many players, we just start another team. As a coach, one of my favorite mottos is, “We coach a game but we teach life principles.”

Duluth postpones gated community annexation

The Duluth City Council on Monday voted to postpone indefinitely the annexation and rezoning of a request by Claude Milan for a gated executive single-family housing community. The approximately 77.8-acre property near the Chattahoochee River is largely vacant except for Milan’s family home on a 37.7-acre portion of the land.

In a previous request for annexation and rezoning of the area, Gwinnett requested a paved 12-foot multi-purpose trail to link Rogers Bridge Park and the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area’s Suwanee Creek Unit. The requested trail has not been provided. Milan is also in discussions with the National Park Service to acquire land for the entrance to the subdivision but has not yet received approval.

Residents at the public hearing expressed concern about school overcrowding, road congestion, and the land’s proximity in the flood zone as well as noting existing sewer lines experience frequent backups and power outages. Any future approval would need to address UDA requirements, river protection issues, and water and sewer concerns.

Doraville looks to improvement grants

The Doraville City Council will consider approving the Buford Highway Livable Centers Initiative Study Agreement during its regular meeting 6:30 p.m. Monday at Doraville City Hall, 3725 Park Ave.

If successful the study will pave the way for a grant for planning development projects. Two other grants being applied for is the Flowers Park Community Development Block Grant and the TIGER Grant. The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery is a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation and would help the city with its Park Avenue extension project.

The council also hold a public hearing for a conditional use permit to operate a research scientist office with laboratory and testing facilities. The applicant, Chad Haase for Otogenetics Corp., is requesting the permit for space at 4553 Winters Chapel Road, an office building.

Information: www.doravillega. us.