'It makes you a man': American comedian's hilarious first encounter with rugby

American Josh Pray reckons rugby is the toughest sportg on earth. Photo / Youtube

An American comedian has documented his first encounter with "rugby football" and the end result is hilarious.

Actor and Youtube sensation Josh Pray, from Naples in Florida, posted a video about his first rugby game on Wednesday - and it has since been viewed over 20,000 times.

In the video, titled Rugby Football Players are secretly Spartan, Pray shares his chance encounter with a group of Australians playing rugby in a Naples park.

"I said, 'I'm an American, I can play football. How hard can rugby possibly be? It's just football'," Pray says, before listing what he calls proof that rugby is "the toughest sport on earth".

These include "some of the fastest white boys in the world play rugby football", needing "shoulders like a well-built highway", and the size of the ball.

"This was Forrest-Gump-running-from-the-kids-throwing-rocks fast," Pray says of the speed of the players, before adding that scrummaging or, as refers to it "locking together and pushing back and forth" nearly caused him serious injury.

"I realised my neck was bending in a way it had never bent before.

"Your spine, your shoulders, your collarbone, your vertebrae ain't built for this kind of intensity."

Pray was also surprised by the size of a rugby ball.

"This ball is like holding a VCR. These strong Australian, New Zealand, English type dudes be tossing it like it's a …it ain't that easy."

He warns fellow Americans that they "need to come prepared to lose a rib".

"Rugby football players are on a level that we couldn't even imagine," he says.

"When you score a point in rugby, the feeling is like no other. When I finally got in the end zone and I put down that egg, I lost my mind.

"I've thrown a three-pointer in basketball, I've hit a home run in baseball, I've scored a soccer goal…score in rugby, it makes you a man."