Play Up And Play The Game - The General Sport Thread

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  • Getting away from politics, I thought I'd start a thread on sport in general.

    I like sport. I'm an active participant myself. My wife is a qualified rugby referee and my daughter is an avid swimmer. My father used to play for one of the most historically important rugby clubs in the world. I love sport.

    So...... any sporting topics.. from football to well, anything really. Discuss it here. it'd be good to get away from politics once in a while.

  • What is your sporting passion...? Mine is rugby union. I've been brought up with the game almost from infancy. Dad used to play back row for Blackheath and as a child I would be taken to matches and I always cheered on "The Club".

    I played at Centre Threequarter for my university women's team. Wife (then girlfriend) played back row. I also played lacrosse for my school and tried my hand at cricket. I was good enough as a batswoman to be given a trial for Kent Women. Alas, a cunningly placed field in my trial match prevented me from scoring runs off my well practised front foot cover drive. I spent a lot of time at the crease for very few runs and didn't get selected. Wife and I play netball for a local club and we play to win.

    Our daughter has always been a water baby and could swim before she was three. She's a member of our local swim club and is coming on leaps and bounds. When we showed her a video of Michael Phelps at the London Olympics, she saw him being presented with a gold medal and said "I want one of those." Ten or fifteen years from now, when a shy little blonde girl named Megan from Cornwall wins Olympic gold in the pool for Britain, remember this post. If the camera switches to her proud parents in the crowd think that that that weeping-with-pride mum was once your worst adversary over Brexit.

    Sport transcends life. Sport gives purpose to those who cannot compete in other areas. Sport isn't life but life is diminished without it. I love my clifftop runs and my netball matches are serious matter. Just because we're women doesn't mean we don't know how to compete.

    So.......... what is your sporting passion.... what do you do...? What do you play...? This is a thread for sport. join the conversation.

  • I enjoy watching Rugby union.. I can't be bothered with Soccer as there are too many overpaid Prima Donnas taking dives and feigning injury. In my younger days I was a successful cycle racer at Club Level , Also sailed competitively in regattas all over the country. I enjoyed weight lifting at Club level. My true love is mountaineering and am fortunate to have access to so many fantastic mountain challenges within a few hours drive from home. To me Sport represents individual challenges. I've never been into competing in team events, I tried them at school ( soccer and Cricket) and they did not give any satisfaction, even when the team won..

    The Voice of Reason

  • I enjoy watching Rugby union.. I can't be bothered with Soccer as there are too many overpaid Prima Donnas taking dives and feigning injury. In my younger days I was a successful cycle racer at Club Level , Also sailed competitively in regattas all over the country. I enjoyed weight lifting at Club level. My true love is mountaineering and am fortunate to have access to so many fantastic mountain challenges within a few hours drive from home. To me Sport represents individual challenges. I've never been into competing in team events, I tried them at school ( soccer and Cricket) and they did not give any satisfaction, even when the team won..

    Thanks for that. Where mountains are concerned, for me, I enjoy skiing down them rather than climbing up them but I see the challenge and admire your pluck for taking that on. It's not something I'd care to do.

    I am more oriented towards team sports. Netball and rugby especially. We still play netball for a local club. It's an evening out in the week for us and we go for a bite to eat and a couple of drinks with the other girls in the team after the game.... when Covid rules permit of course. Thankfully, Cornwall being in Tier One means the rules are pretty loose right now. Wife qualified as a rugby referee last year and she enjoys that. Being a former back row player, she knows what goes on in the scrum and trust me.... the girls know all the same "dark arts" that the lads know. She has to have eyes everywhere. :D

    I like football.... yeah, there are a lot of players constantly trying it on, but it's still a game of skill and pace.

    Do you enjoy the Olympics...? I'm an Olympics junkie - summer and winter games - the Tokyo games being cancelled this year was a major disappointment but at least I have them to look forward to in 2021.

    Glad you enjoy your sport. Feel free to chat anytime. There's always something going on.

  • Getting away from politics, I thought I'd start a thread on sport in general.

    I like sport. I'm an active participant myself. My wife is a qualified rugby referee and my daughter is an avid swimmer. My father used to play for one of the most historically important rugby clubs in the world. I love sport.

    So...... any sporting topics.. from football to well, anything really. Discuss it here. it'd be good to get away from politics once in a while.

    Agree!!:)

    Unfortunately, I am the total opposite. I used to love sport as a little kid, but when the move over to secondary school happened and in combination with the fact that I never grew any bigger, I was always outcompeted by everyone else and hated it in the end.

    So, I'm afraid for me, when I used to have the time it was snooker (is that a sport) and mainly Wimbledon for me. However I did enjoy watching our Olympics in 2012 and although it was a working holiday for me, my family travelled to Great Yarmouth in September 2012 and we saw a leg of the Tour of Britain cycling which was fantastic.

  • I enjoy watching Rugby union.. I can't be bothered with Soccer as there are too many overpaid Prima Donnas taking dives and feigning injury. In my younger days I was a successful cycle racer at Club Level , Also sailed competitively in regattas all over the country. I enjoyed weight lifting at Club level. My true love is mountaineering and am fortunate to have access to so many fantastic mountain challenges within a few hours drive from home. To me Sport represents individual challenges. I've never been into competing in team events, I tried them at school ( soccer and Cricket) and they did not give any satisfaction, even when the team won..

    Wow. That's some serious sports there. Glad I didn't mention that I like to play darts...^^

  • Agree!!:)

    Unfortunately, I am the total opposite. I used to love sport as a little kid, but when the move over to secondary school happened and in combination with the fact that I never grew any bigger, I was always outcompeted by everyone else and hated it in the end.

    So, I'm afraid for me, when I used to have the time it was snooker (is that a sport) and mainly Wimbledon for me. However I did enjoy watching our Olympics in 2012 and although it was a working holiday for me, my family travelled to Great Yarmouth in September 2012 and we saw a leg of the Tour of Britain cycling which was fantastic.

    I was only little in my first year at senior school (I was the youngest girl in my entire year) and found lacrosse a bit intimidating at first. I soon learned how to look after myself though.

    "Aerial Hockey" we used to call it.... played with a hard ball, flying around at head height. The practice of 'chopping' an opponents stick was allowed. That is, when a player was 'cradling' the ball, it was permitted to hit her stick in an attempt to dislodge it. It often caused, sort of, " accidentally on purpose" crunching of opponents fingers against their stick or other contact between stick and bodily parts of the ball carrier. Aren't girls just so lovely to each other..?

    It's not a game for wussies. Put 24 hormonal, adolescent schoolgirls in a field with sticks. This was St Trinians time.

    I gained a bit of a reputation for on-field ferocity once, when I sprinted towards an opponent, stick raised high with clear malice aforethought. Apparently I had a rather fierce and determined look on my face. She didn't see me coming until one of my mates shouted "Go on Jen, whack her one". THEN she saw me. She quickly passed the ball to nowhere in particular and got off her mark. I never did catch her.

    Play nicely now, ladies. ^^

  • I quite liked playing softball at school even though you couldn't give it a serious whack because they had a rule that if it was caught then the whole side was out and you'd get the blame. Our maths master was also a games master and he had a deal that if we got through the year's curriculum early we could go and play softball instead of maths. We were very diligent.

    Football and rugby you can keep though I liked the American football when they showed it on CH4.

    In my thirties my sister encouraged me to go skiing with a large party of friends and I did ski school in Kitzbühel. Lovely place but soo expensive. Wrecked my knee on the last day but that didn't put me off and over the winters I got to be quite good. One time I was skiing with a friend who had trained with the UK Olympic squad and he thought I was pretty good. That was when we went down a black run full of moguls and survived.^^

    Not been recently and have suffered from a recurring knee pain no doubt caused by the old injury. Not sure it would hold up now.:/

  • I quite liked playing softball at school even though you couldn't give it a serious whack because they had a rule that if it was caught then the whole side was out and you'd get the blame. Our maths master was also a games master and he had a deal that if we got through the year's curriculum early we could go and play softball instead of maths. We were very diligent.

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    Football and rugby you can keep though I liked the American football when they showed it on CH4.

    In my thirties my sister encouraged me to go skiing with a large party of friends and I did ski school in Kitzbühel. Lovely place but soo expensive. Wrecked my knee on the last day but that didn't put me off and over the winters I got to be quite good. One time I was skiing with a friend who had trained with the UK Olympic squad and he thought I was pretty good. That was when we went down a black run full of moguls and survived.^^

    Not been recently and have suffered from a recurring knee pain no doubt caused by the old injury. Not sure it would hold up now.:/

    You skied at Kitzbuhel...? Wow.... On the Hahnenkamm...?? That'd be cool. I watch the alpine world cup races on Eurosport and the downhill race on the Hahnenkamm just looks........ scary. The descent is the longest on the tour, it's way beyond steep, the turns are treacherous and the G forces the racers have to cope are between 1.6g to 2g. It's nothing compared to F1 racers but F1 drivers are sitting in a specially constructed cockpit. Ski racers have to do it in a ski suit and with a couple of planks on their feet. They're certainly blowing by the time they get to the finish and their legs have turned to rubber.

    We usually go to Innsbruck or Val d'isere although we did go to Garmisch Partenkirchen in 2008 because wife had always wanted to ski in Bavaria. I have to admit, I loved Bavaria myself.

    The next time we go skiing (we were meant to go this winter but have put it off due to Covid) we'll be going to Innsbruck because we will have daughter with us and the teaching facilities for kids there are brilliant. Innsbruck is wonderful for families, full stop.

    Glad to see there's another winter sport fan on the site.


    Ice skating has started at Eden Project for the winter and we'll be doing that next week. We took Meg for her first skating experience last year. After a few bumps onto her bum she got the hang of it. We're looking forward to it. Evening ice skating, under floodlights with hot chocolate and marshmallows to keep us warm.

    Are there any other skaters out there in Forum Box land..?

  • My sister and brother-in-law went down the Hahnenkamm. I was on the nursery slopes opposite though you could see the run. Looked scary.=O

    I liked it when you were way up in the mountains and the clear air. Looking down into the valleys.

    Me (far right) and others at Kitzbuhel enjoying Jagertee (Hunters tea)

  • Ooooooooooooooo.... Jagertee... yummy. We have been known to participate in a tipple or two. I prefer it to gluhwein, personally.

    The lovely thing about it is that you can put any liqueur you like in it to make your own agreeable flavour. We have friends living in Wien (we always go to visit them when we ski at Innsbruck) and they gave us our recipe for Jagertee

    You get your tea, add wine (it has to be a good red), rum, plum brandy or schnapps (wife prefers Kirsch to plum brandy, but we flip a coin for it), orange juice, cloves, a little cinnamon and pop a couple of lemon slices in too. Our friends like to add sugar, but we don't. We call ours "Diet Jagertee".

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    That'll keep ya nice and warm out on the slopes.

    Yes, we too love the mountain air. It's fresh and makes you feel alive. I wear goggles when I ski because the wind makes my eyes water and I can't see where I'm going. LOL. Wife wears sunglasses (if it's really bright and the UV is high) and calls me a wussy.

    Nice pic of you and your friends. I'm tempted to add a couple of pics of my own but it's a long standing policy of mine not to post personal photos online, anywhere. One of our friends did that once and the images ended up being copied and abused by other people. The internet is like that.

    Ski glucklich...!!!

  • Ooooooooooooooo.... Jagertee... yummy. We have been known to participate in a tipple or two. I prefer it to gluhwein, personally.

    I bought back a bottle of the concentrate. I think you can get this on-line.

    It's funny when I was learning how to ski they kept saying "lift the inside ski" to turn. I could never get my mind round that. Then I found that "Push down on the outside ski" was much more intuitive.

  • I kinda got it first time, more by luck than judgement, probably. I had a good instructor though, who made us run through everything before we got anywhere near the slope. I was only 12 at the time and this was on a dry slope before we went on the holiday, but I learned a lot before I got anywhere near a snowy slope.

    You're right what you say about lifting the inside ski, but it also helps if you dip your shoulder towards the tip of the opposite ski. Just a little.... it doesn't need to be by much, but it does give you greater balance, well, it does for me.

    So....... dip right shoulder toward left ski tip, pressure on right ski, relax a little on left ski, turn left nice and smoothly and don't turn into a human snowball. A pleasure I witnessed my sister experience. She wasn't hurt, but oh, how we laughed.

  • Vierschanzentournee starts today. It's always a great part of Christmas week, and especially so this year because we won't be going out and doing anything else, such as going to the panto (always great fun in Christmas week).

    We can't go out anywhere, so TV fills a large part of the gap in our social lives. And we're making the most of our sub to the sports channels.

    The year we went to Garmisch Partenkirchen for our holiday, the Four Hills had long since departed, but the town was still buzzing about it. That was when I first really noticed ski jumping and talked about it with people who loved it. Until then I kinda admired the "birdmen"..... hell, you wouldn't get me jumping off a ramp at 80 kph+ into thin air........ but it was a case of "you've seen one jump you've seen 'em all". But chatting with people who knew what they were talking about made me more curious.

    Now we have the TV on all the time during Four Hills week. I might not sit and watch it avidly, but it's on the TV..... sort of... "there" as we all go in and out of the living room.

    The sort of skiing I love to watch is the alpine racing or cross country. Marit Bjoergen was, for me, the greatest female athlete of all time, in all sport. That woman was amazing. If you were asked which woman has the most (15) Olympic medals (summer and winter games) of all time, and all sports, most people would pick some glamourpuss like Flo Jo, or a big name in swimming or gymnastics like Nadia Comeneci. Nope... it's the Norwegian housewife who holds just about every record there is to hold in cross country ski racing, including 18 World Championship gold medals, and being a serial World Cup winner too.

    Hey... it might not be a bad idea for a thread sometime..... Who is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). I certainly think Marit Bjoergen's record would take some beating.

  • The football programme chugs on, still managing to survive despite having little or no revenue from the turnstiles coming in at this time.

    I'm aware though, that this is January and the transfer window is now open.... a time when, in normal circumstances, hundreds of millions of pounds change hands in the buying and selling of players.

    Clubs are complaining that with closed stadiums, due to Covid 19, some are struggling to pay their players wages and many are claiming that they could soon go to the wall.

    It will be interesting to see who - if any - are the big spenders between now and the end of the month.

  • If I am being totally honest, all that stuff about player transfer windows and who will go where, bores me titless. But I don't follow football at all, so I guess it must be interesting for some.

    But as for the skiing, now that is interesting. Never been skiing myself, but I think I would like to try, but the only problem is I have a problem with my ears that effects balance and I'm not sure I'd be able to go on a ski slope. But I could always try out those ski lifts all day long instead, that looks fun! (and easy;))

    PS: Another aspect of skiing I love, is the BBC's Ski Sunday theme tune. Love that song.

  • If I am being totally honest, all that stuff about player transfer windows and who will go where, bores me titless. But I don't follow football at all, so I guess it must be interesting for some.

    But as for the skiing, now that is interesting. Never been skiing myself, but I think I would like to try, but the only problem is I have a problem with my ears that effects balance and I'm not sure I'd be able to go on a ski slope. But I could always try out those ski lifts all day long instead, that looks fun! (and easy;))

    PS: Another aspect of skiing I love, is the BBC's Ski Sunday theme tune. Love that song.

    The Ski Sunday theme is derived from an original piece by Bach. Lovely, isn't it..? And very iconic.

    For me, Ski Sunday isn't what it used to be when I used to watch it as a girl, presented by David Vine. We don't even watch it now. We have Eurosport channel which has a very comprehensive commitment to winter sport. Unfortunately, things like Ice Skating have been cancelled due to the dreaded lurgy and other close contact events such as Bobsleigh have also suffered.

    Sorry to hear about your inner ear problems... yes, that would give you difficulties in skiing because of the balance issues. you're missing out on a wonderful recreational sport and also the friendship and cameraderie of skiing enthusiasts... the social side of it is brilliant. When we stay with our friends in Vienna, we invariably head off to Innsbruck and meet up with some of their friends. The contacts and friendships we've made doing something that we greatly enjoy doing anyway have just made it all the better.

  • On the subject of football transfers that involves one club paying another club money for a player to swap clubs who came up with the idea of the clubs paying each other money for what essentially is one employee leaving on club to work for another club and why is it actually nessercery for it to happen, my point being that in the normal world of work if a person wants to move from one company to another they just do so with no money swapping hands between the two companies so why does it happen in football? :/

  • On the subject of football transfers that involves one club paying another club money for a player to swap clubs who came up with the idea of the clubs paying each other money for what essentially is one employee leaving on club to work for another club and why is it actually nessercery for it to happen, my point being that in the normal world of work if a person wants to move from one company to another they just do so with no money swapping hands between the two companies so why does it happen in football? :/

    The football transfer system is as old as the game itself, Ron. Going back to the 1880s, football in England was entirely amateur........ indeed, the game was formalised* from the various boys games played in English public schools to give Victorian gentlemen a sport to play during the winter when there was no cricket.

    If the English had had their way, the game would have stayed forever amateur, but people started paying to watch matches and players began to see a way out of having to go down the pit to earn a living. They reasoned that if there was money coming in, surely they were entitled to some of it..? After all, they were the ones people paid to watch, weren't they..?

    Slowly but surely amateurism was pushed back. The England national team stayed amateur until the early 1900's until finally professionals were allowed to play for England, but even then, the FA demanded that the England Captain be an amateur right up to the start of World War II.

    In the mid 1880s, a Scottish manager (can't remember his name) was recruited by Preston because of his success at managing Queens Park. On appointment he told the Preston board he wanted to bring some of his Scottish players with him but Preston would have to pay Queens Park compensation to release those players registrations. Note: it was deemed to be "compensation". The term "Transfer fee" was coined much later by the press.

    When the English FA brought player registrations in, they realised there was money making potential to be had and so inserted a clause into league rules that a player could only play in FA sanctioned competitions for the club he was registered with. So, although a player could move anywhere he liked (as you suggest), he wouldn't be able to play in League, FA Cup or International matches until his registration was changed....... even if he was out of contract. Grossly unfair. Players were, in effect, slaves.

    This state of affairs lasted right up to 1995 when a Dutch player, Jan Marc Bosman challenged the rule through the European Court of Justice, referring to Article 45 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union.

    The court found in his favour and football has never been the same since.

    Oh, those NASTY Europeans, eh..? Freeing footballers from more than 100 years of employment slavery. The bastards, eh..?

    A player is still tied to his club if he signs a contract with them but at the end of the contract he may move freely. In football parlance, this is called "Leaving on a Bosman".

    If he puts in a transfer request during the term of his contract he can still leave if the club agrees to sell him, but he forfeits the remainder of his wages after leaving.

    If a club sells a player without him requesting a transfer, he is entitled to be paid his wages up to the fulfilment of his contract.

    The Bosman ruling opened the flood gates for agents to move in big time to represent players in transfer negotiations (although they'd been around for years, but much less influentially) and with the influx of TV money that began at around the same time, it became a highly lucrative business. Transfer fees rocketed and so did players wages.


    * I learned a lot about this from knowing the history of Blackheath Rugby Club, when my dad used to play for them. If it hadn't been for Blackheath, football as we know it today wouldn't exist. It's a fascinating story and I'll write on it another time.

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