There Will Be No Sheep Tackling Here, No Sir!

To close out this sleepy Monday, we bring you sport from the other side of the pond; more specifically, the banning of such. The BBC reports that in New Zealand — wait ... that's not really "the other side of the pond," is it?; sorry, we went to grade school in the United States and thusly know nothing about world geography — the popular practice of "sheep tackling" will no longer be tolerated.

Apparently, sheep "wrangling" is used as training for rugby players, which, frankly, tells us more about rugby than we necessarily wanted to know. The halftime show had involved children running after the sheep and bringing them down, which sounds like a really scary dream we had once, but that's a whole other story.

Says a SPCA spokesperson: "The message that these young people are getting is that it's OK to get out there and bully animals for entertainment." As opposed to, you know, rugby.

Sheep Tackling Ban In New Zealand [BBC News]