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| Subject: How about... | |
Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 19:12:32 12/07/04 Tue In reply to: Dave (UK) 's message, "Scotland The Brave" on 17:01:16 12/07/04 Tue "The noblest prospect a Scotsman ever sees Is the High Road that takes him to England"? ;-) Seriously, though, Wild Mountain Thyme is pretty good as that sort of thing goes. My trouble with thinking about this sort of thing is that I don't really believe that we should compete in sporting events separately. It seems to me that the only reason why we do is because we invented all these sports, and until the late 19th century Britain was the only place where they were played; consequently, it was impossible to have international games except by having England against Scotland or Ireland etc. However, now that the rest of the world (except for those stubborn Americans and, alas, the Canadians) all play our sports, there's really no need for this historical aberration. Besides, if we all played as Great Britain we might actually stand a chance of winning something... look how well the Lions do. Well, used to... [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: You can say goodbye to international rugby, then | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 20:53:01 12/07/04 Tue If CANZUK ever happens, we would have England (current world champions), Australia (two time world champions) and New Zealand (one time world champions and undisputed gods) all on one team. Against South Africa, France, Ireland, ... Argentina would suddenly be on of the top five teams in the world. No, let's keep things the way they are. Apart from everything else, you will never sell CANZUK to the Kiwis if you say they have to give up their All Blacks. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Interesting thought. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 21:12:39 12/07/04 Tue Well, rugby is the sport which has least dissemination outside the Crown Commonwealth. Even with the UK playing as about 76 different counties, the Rugby World Cup was a shorter affair than the soccer or even the cricket world cups. Put Britain as well as Australia and NZ together and you have about 5 teams in the world which really play it. I don't think that this would apply to cricket, since pretty much every Commonwealth country plays that, nor to soccer, since pretty much every country in the world plays that (I wonder why our least interesting sport has been our most successful cultural export?). But my main point was about a United Kingdom team rather than a CANZUK team, which, clearly, would be a bit of a joke. After all, it would just be the Australian team with a new name! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Well, ah... | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 21:36:59 12/07/04 Tue I too wonder why the whole world took to soccer (I live in Brazil, after all), and I suspect because it is so extremely simple to understand. How people can get so passionate about it is beyond me, though. Ninety minutes watching two groups of men who alternate between trying to pull each other's shirts off and lying on the ground in agony because someone touched them, all of which ends in a scoreless draw? I don't get it. But I must correct you on one point: a CANZUK rugby team would certainly not be an Australian team with another name. In Rugby League, perhaps, but not in Rugby Union. Our two World Cups do not really reflect our place in the world of rugby: we are among the serious players, but not the leader. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: UK Teams | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 21:51:23 12/07/04 Tue Ian, I agree entirely with your observations on football. It is such a contrast, where in football, if a player should give so much as a cursory glance at an opposition player, they will fall like a sack of potatoes, and roll towards the touch-line as if they were on a 45 degree slope. Rugby players will only leave the field when their vision is impaired by blood-filled eyes. Yes, I’ve always been a proponent of United Kingdom sporting teams (CANZUK team aside for now). I think one of the main reason foreigners misunderstand our national composition is that we are the only country in the world that has such an inconsistent face to the world. We compete as Great Britain at the athletics and motor racing. We compete as England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland at football. We compete as England/Scotland/Wales/Ireland at rugby union. We compete as Great Britain at rugby league. Of course, in the Commonwealth Games, we compete as England/Scotland/Wales/NI/IoM/Jersey/Guernsey/Rockall etc. This is farcical, and I know of no sport where we enter as the United Kingdom. There was talk of the authorities trying to form a GB football team, should London win the Olympic bid in 2012. However, this went down like a lead balloon in Scotland, causing tremors in the West-Highland fault, and people rushing to resurrect Hadrian’s Wall. People here are supposedly very proud of having their own “national” team. This is a team that is subjected to ritual humiliation every time they play. Personally, I would have more pride in being represented by one or two players in a winning team (admittedly we would not provide many at the moment), than having an entire team that serves in making the opposition look good. The same is increasingly true of rugby union too, as professionalism has destroyed the game here. As far as rugby goes, we would only lose one reasonably good team (Wales) as Ireland would continue, so I do not see competition being adversely affected. How many Ulstermen play in the united Ireland team anyway, does anyone know? This would merely reduce the number of cricket-score tallies mounted by Southern-Hemisphere teams when they tour here. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 21:56:34 12/07/04 Tue I was thinking principally of cricket when I suggested that a CANZUK team would be mostly Australians with perhaps an English batsman. The soccer thing is the same, really. A UK team would be the English team plus Ryan Giggs. This is no ciriticism of Scottish football: perhaps if the top Scots teams were allowed to compete in the English premiership as they should (rather than just winning the Scots Premiership by a 20 point margin every year), then Scots footballers would improve. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: rugby quite popular in Canada | |
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Author: Andrew(Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 23:28:33 12/07/04 Tue its not true that Canada doesnt play rugby. In fact, at my University(University of Victoria) for those who want to know, rugby is the most popular sport, and one of my friends is a rugger player. we also have a decent football team(real football, not the strange american game). its true we might not be very good compared to the rest of the CANZUK nations, but i believe if a maybe a CANZUK league was set up for rugby and football, Canadians players would increase in skill. also, maybe we could set up a CANZUK hockey and lacrosse leagues...ha, who knows? maybe we can actually get the rest of the CANZUK nations to like it...which makes me wonder...ive always heard that people in the other CANZUK nations think hockey is rubbish...anyone want to comment? (by the way, i believe it was British soldier stationed in Canada that invented the game, if you wanted to know.) [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Nah | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 23:48:36 12/07/04 Tue I didn't know that Rugby was popular in Canada, but I suspect that this is because it has recently started to catch on, rather than being a long-established sport. Am I right? I so rarely am... As for hockey being rubbish, I couldn't disagree more. When I was at school, every fortnight we staggered up the road to the ice-rink at Alexandra Palace, dressed up in the most absurd-looking kit and attempted to play hockey. From experience, I can say that it's one of the hardest things I've ever tried! Conversely, on a couple of occasions we tried the sort of hockey which women play on fields, and I found that both much easier and a thousand times more painful... [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Rugby | |
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Author: Andrew(Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 01:40:59 12/08/04 Wed hockey is very difficult to play on ice...i haven't skated on ice since i was a young child, but i remember trying to play and it was quite hard...as for rugby being a recent trend in Canada....i guess it depends on what you think is recent...my school was established in 1960, and they've been playing since then i believe, and a private rugby club across the street has been around even longer...also, in Victoria(where I live) cricket is fairly popular, mainly among older people, but a fair bit of younger people play as well at the local cricket pitch...we had a tournament here last summer for amateur team, it was pretty neat...i remember being a young boy and going to the pitch with my Granddad and watching they cricket matches...i found it boring then, but its fairly fun to watch now [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Something I never understood until I moved to the UK... | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 01:52:54 12/08/04 Wed Cricket is an odd creature. However much we colonials may play it, I don't believe that we can really understand it until we see it in its original context. I remember, when I was a young lad, getting to know this weird, green and chilly new country, I was taken out of London to the countryside by my parents, and after a long walk we found a village with a pub in it. Opposite the pub was the village green, and as we sipped cider outside a sixteenth century pub and day turned into dusk, the amateur cricketers played on the green: significantly, without even bothering to keep the score - tournament didn't enter into it. When it was too dark to play on they drew stumps and came across to the pub for some Scrumpy and Winkle's Old Peculiar in their grass-stained Whites and smoked pipes. Cricket in RSA just isn't like that - we care who wins. I think that this was the moment when I fell in love with Britain. To quote the bloke, "England, with all thy faults I love thee still." [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: "the sort of hockey which women play on fields" | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 12:36:55 12/08/04 Wed Being from a country where the temperature never gets low enough to freeze lakes, "hockey" for us always means the one played on grass (or artificial surfaces). It was my favourite sport at school. Australia has something of a tradition of being not bad at hockey. It first became a (men's) Olympic sport at the Melbourne games in 1956, with the women following in 1980, at which Australia didn't compete. The women won gold in 1988, 1996 and 2000, whereas the men only won their first gold this year in Athens, having previously been stuck with three silvers and three bronzes. Great Britain won men's gold in 1988 and bronze in 1984 and women's bronze in 1992. New Zealand picked up men's gold in 1976. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Hehe. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:26:02 12/08/04 Wed I had no intention of calling the manliness of field hockey players into question, I assure you! Any game in which one is liable to be clobbered with large sticks, struck in the face with a ball made out of some species of rock moving at 80 feet per second, and which involves quite so much sprinting as that is quite beyond my ability to be competitive in. All I meant was that, in Blighty, boys' schools play rugger and girls' schools play hockey. I don't know what mixed/co-ed schools play, but I suspect that they probably play Association football and car-stealing. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Federation sports | |
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Author: Jim (Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 14:17:29 12/08/04 Wed I don't think the federation should be just about the rest of us adopting British sports - it should be a two way street. We should all adopt hockey (whether ice or road) and Australian Rules Football. If we all played each other's sports, then we will have a true sporting union. I can't see why others cannot learn to play Canadian sports. All members should play soccer, cricket, rugby, hockey, ARF and basketball (invented by a Canadian). [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: I agree... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 14:21:21 12/08/04 Wed Ice Hockey is a fantastic sport. I used to have a local team (Ayr Scottish Eagles) that I followed briefly a few years ago. Sadly, the team owner absconded with the funds and they, alas, became bankrupt. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: i dont know... | |
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Author: Andrew(Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 17:49:16 12/08/04 Wed even if it was invented by a Canadian, i really dont find basketball that entertaining, i know a lot of other people do though...but to me, it seems not quite as exciting as hockey or rugby or football, and it doesn't seem as fast paced [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Australian Football is a brilliant sport | |
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Author: Ian (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 00:17:00 12/09/04 Thu Despite a fondness for rugby that goes back to childhood (having grown up in one of the country's two rugby states), I would have to admit that Australian Football is the most spectacular sport in the world to watch. I would love to see it played seriously at international level. Ice hockey is always going to be a big ask in Australia, but we play pretty much everything else. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Including surfing | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 01:07:19 12/09/04 Thu I like to watch Aussie Rules on Sky Sports 3. It looks rather like 19th Century rugby, with nothing barred except for biting and bottles. It also reminds me a lot of Gaelic football - you know, the type which you don't play with sticks. To be honest, though, I think that it would be illegal in the UK under EEC legislation governing wanton acts of violence. Is there an NZ version? Oy veh, we really need a kiwi member! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: fun fun fun | |
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Author: Kevin (U.S.) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 01:26:50 12/09/04 Thu Gaelic football is great fun. Hurling is also quite fun to play, once you get the hang of it. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Curling is a Scottish sport which is quite popular in Canada | |
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Author: Jim (Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 12:16:25 12/09/04 Thu [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Curling Stones | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:18:24 12/09/04 Thu Did you know that curling stones are made from granite carved from this small island off the Ayrshire coast, called Ailsa Craig? I like to watch the sun set over it on a good day...   [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:57:05 12/09/04 Thu Do you mean that ALL curling stones are carved out of this island, in the same way that all cricket bats must be carved from English willow? If so, we must pray that curling does not become a popular international sport on the scale of soccer, or yet another one of our beautiful islands will be lost, being totally removed in order to allow people to push rocks across ice with broom-sticks. I understand that a pretty British island has recently been declared uninhabitable, because most of it has been removed to build Egyptian luxury hotels. This is discouraging in a way, but encouraging in another: our commericial genius can not have left us completely if we are able to sell sand to Egypt on such an impressive scale. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Well... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:14:30 12/09/04 Thu Nowadays, Ailsa Craig is no longer inhabited, and has become is a bird sanctuary. It is a home to puffins amongst other things. However, between 60-70% of curling stones in existence in the world, are said to have been fashioned from Ailsa granite. The island is volcanic, and is a unique point of geological interest in my local area. However, there is a far more beautiful island off the Ayshire coast called Arran. I like nothing better than to walk along the beach on a summer evening and watch the sun set over it. I have photographed it many times. These are not mine however… Summer  Winter  [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Arran | |
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Author: Ed Harris (Venezia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:23:49 12/09/04 Thu Met a bloke from Arran the other day. He said it was beautiful but dead. Reminds me of dear old Venice. Seriously, though, I think we're lucky to live in such beautiful places, but would be misguided to stay there permanently... ...as for walking along the beach and watching sunsets, I imagine that Ayshire is probably the oldest place to do so after La Serenissima... [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Yes | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 16:28:40 12/09/04 Thu Arran has been taken over by retired people. It's a nice island, often called Scotland in miniature. However, I prefer to look at it from afar. I go cycling there quite a lot though... [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Lynch Dave! | |
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Author: Curnoack [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 20:25:54 01/07/05 Fri "I go cycling there quite a lot though..." Is that so that you can escape the lynch mob of angry Scots at home? Lynch David, as opposed to David Lynch... [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: Well... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 00:30:38 01/08/05 Sat It's to escape parochial nationalism really... [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Subject: lacrosse | |
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Author: Aussie (Australia) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 05:58:18 01/06/05 Thu >maybe we could set up a CANZUK hockey and lacrosse leagues...ha, who knows? maybe we can actually get the rest of the CANZUK nations to like it...< well with CANZUK maybe Australia and Canada could finally win the lacrosse world title back off the USA. 2 of the 3 lacrosse superpowers merged, oh i like that thought. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |