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| Subject: You can say goodbye to international rugby, then | |
Author: Ian (Australia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 20:53:01 12/07/04 Tue In reply to: Ed Harris (Venezia) 's message, "How about..." on 19:12:32 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. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
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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 ] |
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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 ] |
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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 ] |