It's a fairly simple concept, it's played in all schools from age 5 onwards. Football is our national sport but if our kids play it regularly in primary school they would be in the select few - my kids went through primary school without hardly kicking a ball.
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We're not great at football we're not great at rugby!
- Thread starter Doc Lynam
- Start date
It's a fairly simple concept, it's played in all schools from age 5 onwards. Football is our national sport but if our kids play it regularly in primary school they would be in the select few - my kids went through primary school without hardly kicking a ball.
RandyWanger
Je suis rôti de boeuf
A bit of both, but looking up and down the grid at any FIA event and there will be English drivers in the mix, F1, WEC, WTCC etc. For a small island, we're not so bad.
That's an urban myth: my kids played lots of competitive sports in primary school: my son last year represented the school in five different sports. And talking to other parents at my kids' rugby clubs, that level of competition is not just a Brighton thing - there's plenty of competitive sports in schools around Sussex.
What's probably had a greater effect is the increased workload on teachers who have less time to spare for games and the amount of playing fields sold off - but both of these probably have more effect on secondary schools
mikeyjh
Well-known member
Has it? Is be interested to know when this removal of competing occurred and how the decline had been marked? I'm not aware of a demonstrable decline in performance over last couple of decades or so.....
Moshe Gariani
Well-known member
- Mar 10, 2005
- 12,092
Compared to the other major cricketing countries we have an almost insurmountable handicap in the shape of our weather. At the base of our cricketing pyramid you find the average English child either doesn't play cricket at all or even if they join a club they often only get a handful of matches each year.
Obviously the ones who are keen and/or privileged do play more but this provides only a narrow base of skilled players compared to other countries.
Every top athlete has come through the schools competition system. To move on in any individual sport you have to go outside I grant you.
The labour bit is too much of a generalisation to be taken seriously. I think John Majors government sold off more schools playing fields than anyone else didn't he ?
Frampler
New member
The main problems are that it rains a lot, we have fewer places to play, we watch too much TV and play too many video games, our coaching techniques are often in the dark ages, and we let big kids dominate at youth level rather than making them play against older kids their own size.
This applies to cricket, rugby and football. All of which we invented and are now rubbish at.
The best rugby players I have played with were all trained outside the UK - even the Canadians are ahead of us in terms of technique and game awareness.
This applies to cricket, rugby and football. All of which we invented and are now rubbish at.
The best rugby players I have played with were all trained outside the UK - even the Canadians are ahead of us in terms of technique and game awareness.
Mr Bridger
Sound of the suburbs
we're still world champions a LUZZING plastic chairs aren't we
please say we are
please say we are
Doc Lynam
I hate the Daily Mail
- Jun 19, 2011
- 7,204
- Thread starter
- #30
In Matthew Syed's book Bounce he refers to his streets success at table tennis, more national champions then rest of the uk combined with other players such as himself competing on a world stage. He put his success down to a complex series of events; his road was one street within the umbrella of a comprehensive school where the PE teacher was a national table tennis coach and they had access to his knowledge the only 24/7 table tennis club in the country. So they had expert training from a young age and put that into hour and hours of training. As he said success doesn't always come down to the best times, on a lot of occasions its happens way before that and it can come down to your postcode and other factors.
hart's shirt
Well-known member
We're very good at rowing.
And on NSC political threads, we're very good at rowing.
And on NSC political threads, we're very good at rowing.
There was a report from Ofsted last year about the lack of competitive sport in state schools. The report highlighted the lack of playing fields and lack of time in the curriculum for sport but no mention of a belief that competition was harmful. There may well have been a few teachers sounding off about it but that doesn't add up to lots of schools withdrawing from competitive sports.
The average rainfall in the UK is pretty much identical to the average rainfall in NZ. It doesn't seem to harm their ability to play rugby or cricket
The weather is overstated as a factor in cricket. My son has been playing for a local team for two seasons and not a single game has been rained off in that time - we have had matches cancelled because one of the teams couldn't raise a side - that's much of a concern than the weather
Moshe Gariani
Well-known member
- Mar 10, 2005
- 12,092
I'm not sure what your agenda is but you seem to be a bit of a UK weather denier...
The only other "major" cricket country you can cite with a climate anything like ours is New Zealand. They have been famously not very good at cricket for most of their history in the sport.
I'm not a weather denier: I just think you're over-stating the case. You implied weather regularly affected games and, as I said, my son's team hasn't had a game rained off in two seasons. Yes, the odd game is rain-affected but it's not an everyday occurrence.
And I actually think that NZ have punched well above their weight in cricket. Considering that they have about a fifteenth of the population that we have, they do pretty well. They're currently ranked third in one-day cricket and fifth in test cricket - both above England. And if you want historical comparisons, NZ have appeared in seven WC semi-finals while Eng have appeared in five (although we have reached three finals).
As I said, England have in-built advantages of wealth and number of players that mean we'll never fail at cricket but we're not doing anywhere near as well as we should be and you're deluding yourself if you think that's solely down to weather
- Apr 13, 2015
- 3,480
The seeds were sown across the country at THAT time,... PE lessons changed shape to accommodate the lowest performance level, that has carried forward into todays curriculum. Deregulation ( looser central govt control of budgets) resulted in the fields being sold off, but the damage had already been done, schools felt they COULD do away with football, cricket and rugby fields, money was recouped, PE continued to be on a smaller scale, mostly hall based activities,.... mostly.
Of course there are exceptions everywhere, examples you can throw around, but the school hall PE concept,... together with time pressures introduced by SATs etc,... proved the death nell of large scale inter school cricket, football, rugby, hocky... in the state school system at least.
Oh, I totally agree that there's less competitive sport than there was when I was at school, 40 or 50 years ago, but it's not because there's been a mass rejection of sport because it was competitive. The lack of playing fields and time pressure have done the damage.
As I said, it's certainly not universal - there's plenty of sport in Sussex schools - but I'm sure there's a lot less
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Pavilionaire
Well-known member
- Jul 7, 2003
- 30,603
I'd also imagine that the Health & Safety / Insurance factor has probably got something to do with it too. Too much exposure to litigation, too much risk, too much cost in case of injury?
Good point. My son's school, while still playing football competitively, has banned football at break time as someone could get hurt when it's unsupervised. That's not going to help
And there's lots of noise about rugby right now
Lifelong Supporter
Well-known member
The point is we are competitive at both but just not winning things as a nation. As to football perhaps we have the most competitive and entertaining football to watch in the world. OK we do not put together the best national team but it is not hopeless.
We have the Amex experience and national under 21 football. I think we should take the glass half full approach rather than half empty and enjoy what we have with some of the best football players in the world playing each other each week. Not the best but amongst the best. So many nations now play football and we are not doing too badly. Did we not win all our Euro qualification games ? OK we will not win the thing but we are good just not good enough to win the thing.
Smile and enjoy what we have.
We have the Amex experience and national under 21 football. I think we should take the glass half full approach rather than half empty and enjoy what we have with some of the best football players in the world playing each other each week. Not the best but amongst the best. So many nations now play football and we are not doing too badly. Did we not win all our Euro qualification games ? OK we will not win the thing but we are good just not good enough to win the thing.
Smile and enjoy what we have.
Doc Lynam
I hate the Daily Mail
- Jun 19, 2011
- 7,204
- Thread starter
- #40
Thats also part of the problem regarding the development of English players have a listen to Gareth Southgate's U21 interview on Seagulls Player. Its not about glass half full everyone knows playing time for u21 is like gold dust at a top level just when they need to be tested. Barcelona have the right idea about blooding youngsters saying whats the point of building Ferrari's if you're not going to use it; this was also a sideways dig at Madrid's spending policy. The premier league is so short sighted as to be blind.