Sports in Britain

Outline

- Cradle of the sport, team spirit, education….
- Amateur vs. professional
- Passion
- Footbal
- Cricket
- Rugby
- Animal sports
- Rowing
- …

Britain is called the cradle of the sports because there were invented many European sports. Britain is also the place where many official rules of the sports were codified for the first time. The biggest development of the sports in Britain was in Victorian age and in the last century. It was caused by the strong belief in benefits of doing the sports in e.g. education or in public life. The team games should be a tool to develop and practice the team spirit and teamwork. But the sports wasn't about playing and competing. It was also a model of good manners, sports and games could teach people how to behave, to be a good winner and also a good loser. Cheating was unacceptable and fair play was the main aim of every activity.
Today it is a little bit different. The fair play and the pleasure from doing sports work mainly in amateur sport. Almost every sport or game has its professional league or competition and sportsmen do them as a well-paid job. The top players are popular media stars the same as e.g. film or music celebrities. Nevertheless sports and games are still very important part of British life.

Sports are considered as a national passion and the British are keen on competing in almost everything. Every activity has its national association including board games and they set rules and organize tournaments. British sport passion is also remarkable in newspapers. Every paper has couple sport pages and people love to read about it. Following at least one sport is the main forms of entertainment for thousands of men and thousands of them take part in something at least once a week.
The most popular sport is certainly football and the British are really good at it. It is the most played ball game in England and Scottland. Football is mainly men centered activity. The players and the spectators are mainly men. It is not caused by the less interest of women but by the fact that visiting football was a bit dangerous because of hooligans and violent way of cheering teams. But this problem seems to be solved by different organization of the stadiums and by better security arrangements.

Another important sport is a Cricket. It is more than a sport. It is considered also a social event and it symbolizes the certain way of life. It is connected with rural summer atmosphere. Many people in Britain who follows Cricket aren't sure about the rules, which are rather complicated but they love the mood of it. One game of Cricket is very long and it takes couple hours which not everybody could spend so people often listen it on radio when working.

The third important sport of UK is rugby. It is the national sport of Wales and New Zealand. It was originally working class sport and it is very aggressive ball game It is played with egg-shaped ball and the aim is to carry it to the opposite team line. It is played without any body armor and it is also men sport.