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Having played both rugby and football I can assure you that this is not true. Generally speaking the hits in Football are infintitely more vicious than in rugby.
Absolutely true, any wide receiver would atest to that when he had just been flattened by the Free safety.
I reality the main difference between Rugby and American Throwball is the fluidity of the game, In rugby Union the game is a continuous flow with very few stoppages <In thoery> the fluidity does not allow for the impacts that you see in Rugby League and American Throwball.
Rubgy League has more stoppages but again since you have to be on your feet and going again in 5 seconds you have to choose when you use your 'Big Hits' where as American Throwball the stop start nature of the game with 40 sec intervals between plays allows for the High impact tackling that necessatated the introduction of Padding for the safety of players.
IMHO it does not take anything from the game and allows for very spectacular individual plays that you rarely get in the two forms of rugby.
It does lose out on the fluid action though but that is to the taste of the American Audiance.