favourite of the big four english team sports

Ronan is right that Union has been improved since professionalism and, I'd argue, since League players came in or since players crossed codes more freely. My gripe is mainly directed at the utterly fucking tedious England team, but I'm not totally immune to the charm and excitement of watching two teams of chinless toffs hoofing a ball into touch for 80 minutes with occasional pauses for trying to kill each other.

That's what always gets me about Union, if these guys are so good how come they're forever dropping the ball!

it's only a matter of time until american football takes over england anyway

But you cd just as easily take the opposite view and look at sport as cooperative enterprise and the striving of a group to overcome the limitations of the individuals.

well, individual sports are about striving to overcome those limitations yourself. the internal psychological narrative is far more compelling to me.

Plus most team sports allow for the genius of the individual as well as the organisation of the team.

yeah but they don't reward it unless the genius individual is backed up by other individuals strong enough to carry the team through to the trophy!!

i mean, there's a reason that doubles in tennis is just a lark which singles players don't take seriously...

i mean, why should you have to rely on anyone else to help you overcome your own limitations??? that's not an ideal anyone should aspire to.

Martina did

McEnroe did

i remember some terrific wimbledon doubles games in the early 80s

being part of a team is awesome and exhilarating as shit.

btw saying this: rubbish conceptually as surely the point of professional sport is attaining individual glory, pushing the self to its physical and mental limits when sports like soccer (where you are pretty much sprinting for an hour and a half) and water polo (where you are sprint-swimming and treading water for an hour) exist is kind of silly.

also um individual athletes still have coaches, so your "they do it on their own" line isn't really true

I can completely dig on tennis or boxing for the purity and the gladiatorial ethic but that doesn't exclude team games for me. Also I like the idea that rugged determination and slightly pedestrian work-ethic can beat beautiful style sometimes and that happens a lot less often in single player sports I think.

lex do you hate football because it's a team sport or because of the people who like/play it?

both martina and mcenroe would've blown off a doubles match in an instant if it threatened their singles success

xps but once they're actually out in the arena they're on their own - which is why i'm so against on-court coaching in tennis. tarnishes the whole sport imo, a total embarrassment

Union's the easy one. For a start, everybody has to work in a Rugby League team whereas in Union you have half-a-dozen backs hanging around doing nothing.

The idea that either is easy is completely moronic. That said the second sentence is even stupider, have you ever seen Union recently? The backs put in as many tackles as anyone else.

As for "comedy of errors", this is just silly, if a team's dropping the ball it's cos they are put under pressure more or hit harder.

x-post I believe it's only in England (and say Leinster!) that it's a toff sport, think bigger. I'd disagree about league players influence, isn't it usual that these players are terrible? Trying to think of major success stories. Do many Union players go to League? It seems rarer...

yeah honestly there are few things more awesome than winning a championship with teammates, or watching your teammate come through in a big situation

lex do you hate football because it's a team sport or because of the people who like/play it?

w/football it's both, which is why it's the worst of these. every football player i've encountered in the media has been such an unsympathetic, obnoxious twat.

I believe it's only in England (and say Leinster!) that it's a toff sport, think bigger.

And Scotland

Lex is right about doubles, it's basically like when John Virgo used to do his impersonations of Dennis Taylor and Ray Reardon in the intervals during the snooker

Also sure it's cool when athletes overcome their personal limitations but often watching feats of athletic prowess is dull cos the aesthetic is so spartan compared to the inventiveness and fun and randomness of team sports.

I guess I'm kind of wholeheartedly against a definition of "sport" that excludes soccer/football/basketball/etc but includes table tennis.

being part of a team is awesome and exhilarating as shit.

no way, it's annoying and awkward and constraining

i always feel a bit sad for people who are holding up giant trophies w/their teammates and they can only get like one hand on it lol. how much more exhilarating to hold it up all by yourself!

Scotland outside of the Borders region,where farmhands play it. Theyre not exactly posh. Its not restricted to farm owners.

It's posher than it is England

Lex do you like Boxing?

it's only a matter of time until american football takes over england anyway

― k3vin k., Thursday, 4 June 2009 18:10 (1 minute ago) Bookmark

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hgG5resp3FA/SdGNjdQXthI/AAAAAAAAAD0/KppJ5lcSJek/s320/george_galloway.jpg

boxing isn't my thing but i def respect it

Golf?

I can't think of many League players that were exceptional successes at Union no. In fact the best example of somebody achieving at both would be Jonathan Davies who crossed the other way. I just feel like once the Iron Curtain came down a little of the tactical spirit of League crossed over into Union, by osmosis or something - again, I know this is mainly an England thing.

i imagine lex has the same bemusement w/ "teams" as he does w/ "bands"

yep, golf is great. its lack of athleticism prevents me from taking it tooooo seriously, but what a test of nerve it is...

I cant imagine the lex liking bands that dislike impurity in their field
xpost

I wish there was a US cable channel that showed cricket, rugby and (esp) snooker. Darts too maybe.

soccer > cricket > rugby. Field hockey can eat a bag of dicks.

lex, you're pretty much full of

yep, golf is great. its lack of athleticism prevents me from taking it tooooo seriously, but what a test of nerve it is...

Darts fan are you Lex?

haha whoops, xp

wait louis does the "hockey" in the poll mean ice- or field hockey? or is it assumed to mean both?

So what if posh people play a sport? It's fairly meaningless. Football may not be posh but to watch a game of it you'd think it was.

field xp

Lex dont you like the idea of a team working hard together to reach the status of being the very best? A mix of flair and determined professionalism with a will to achieve all they can?

darts is too far. it's as much of a sport as eating a bag of crisps.

damn, cut off before we could get to billiards

x-post why don't you win the world darts championship then?

obv it is field hockey, KK

for every andy farrell there's a jason robinson amirite

Football is a lot more posh than it used to be. A lot of people simply cant afford to go to football anymore. Just look at the prawn sandwich brigade,that didn't exist in the 1980s.

cuz i don't like crisps

xps

http://www.clovisdesign.com/IDS/images/bar-billiards.jpg

I used to know how to play that

^^^was played, with some success, at a recent london FAP

wtf is that Jim??

wait louis does the "hockey" in the poll mean ice- or field hockey? or is it assumed to mean both?

Ice hockey isn't an English invention, is it? Actually, I'm not sure "field" hockey is either. LOL, weird saying "field" hockey, how American is that phrase?

Bar Billiards, mentalist combo of billiards, jenga, and 5 pints of mild.

... what I mean is, none more American (xp)