Think of your favorite sport. Whatever it is, there is a good chance that it was first played in Britain, and an even better chance that its modern rules were first codified in Britain. The public schools of the Victorian era believed that organized competitive games had many psychological benefits. These games appealed to, and developed, the British sense of "fair play". You had to be a "good loser". To be a cheat was shameful, but to lose was just "part of the game". Team games were best, because they developed "team spirit".
Modem sport in Britain is very different. "Winning isn't everything" and "it"s only a game" are still well-known sayings, but to modern professionals, sport is clearly not just a game. These days, top players in any sport talk about having a "professional attitude" and doing their "job" well, even if, officially, their sport is still an amateur one.
Sport probably plays a more important part in people's lives in Britain than it does in most other countries. For a very large number, this is especially true for men, it is their main form of entertainment. Millions take part in some kind of sport at least once a week. Many millions more are regular spectators and follow one or more sports. There are hours of televised sport each week. Every newspaper, national or local, quality or popular, devotes several pages entirely to sport.
Sometimes the traditions which accompany an event can seem as important as the actual sporting contest. Wimbledon, for instance, is not just a tennis tournament. It means summer fashions, strawberries and cream, garden parties and long, warm English summer evenings.
Many of such events have become world-famous. Therefore, it is not only the British who tune in to watch. The Grand National, for example, attracts a television audience of 300 million. The cup finals of other countries often have better quality and more entertaining football on view - but more Europeans watch the English Cup Final than any other. The standard of British tennis is poor, and Wimbledon is only one of the world's major tournaments. But if you ask any top tennis player, you find that Wimbledon is the one they really want to win. Every footballer in the world dreams of playing at Wembley, every cricketer in the world of playing at Lord's.
Wimbledon, Wembley and Lord's are the "spiritual homes" of their respective sports.
Sport is a British export!
(from Britain, abridged)
BASEBALL
Baseball is America"s most popular sport. In a baseball game there are two teams of nine players. Players must hit a ball with a bat and then run around four bases. A player who goes around all the bases scores a run for his team .The team that finishes with more runs wins the game.
Where did baseball come from? No one knows for sure. Many people believe that the idea came from a game played by children in England. Other people believe that a man named Abner Doubleday invented the game in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. But the first real rules of baseball were written in 1845 by Alexander Cartwright. Two teams from New York played a game following Cartwright's rules.
The rules worked well. Soon there were many teams.
These early teams were not professional. They played only for fun, not money. But baseball was very popular from the start. Businessmen saw that they could make money with professional baseball teams.
The first professional team was started in 1869. This team was the Red Stockings of Cincinnati. Within a few years there were professional teams in other cities. In 1876 these teams came together in a league, or group, called the National League.
In the eighth grade we begin the topic of sports. It is difficult to overestimate its importance in the life of every Briton. The most popular sports in England are walking, football and cricket. But there are still many wonderful, traditional species for the country. I will try to gradually talk about most of them. And most importantly, post videos and photographs about each of the species presented on the blog. The story about each sport is accompanied by a short video and text in English - for translation to students.
The British government is increasingly interested in problems of English sport. Today, the list of sports whose development is stimulated by the state has been significantly expanded. The position of Minister of Sports has been created, who coordinates sporting events throughout the country. The government has privatized some sports centers previously managed by local authorities. The level of sports standards and the provision of sports equipment and facilities for the British are increasing.
Other sports such as golf, tennis, bowling, horse racing are also very popular in England.
Young people go in for traditional athletics - running, jumping, as well as rowing, swimming and boxing. But those who take to motoring, hunting or fishing in youth continue with these sports even in middle age and on.
In Scotland, where there are good conditions for winter sports, skiing and climbing are very popular.
The English are great lovers of sport, and when they are neither playing nor watching games they like to talk about them. In Britain about 29 million people over the age of 16 regularly take part in sport or exercise.
England is the birthplace of many modern kinds of sports. That's why many of them have English names. It is often easy to understand how these sports were named. For example, baseball is played with a ball and bases. Basketball is played with a ball and two baskets. The names for other sports come from the name of the place where they were first played. Badminton comes from the name of a piece of land owned by an English Duke. The game was first played on the Duke's land in 1873. Golf was first played in Scotland, but its name comes from the Dutch word for a hockey club, "colf". Squash:squash is a traditional English sports game
Squash.mp4
Let's start our acquaintance with traditional English sports with squash. It is similar to tennis and badminton, but much faster. The speed of the ball can exceed 200 km/h, moving around the court requires good reaction and endurance.
Squash is democratic and all-weather; anyone can start playing it without special training. It appeared in England, but the games that became its predecessors were practically forgotten, and squash itself became popular in Great Britain and beyond. The issue of including squash in the 2016 Olympics is even being considered. There are 9 thousand squash courts in England. This is a competitive game using rackets and a ball on a special court (rectangular hall). The players' task is to alternately hit the ball with a racket, bouncing off the walls and floor, without violating the established rules.
The court consists of a square room. Two players with rackets similar to tennis rackets have to strike a small rubber ball. The ball must strike the front wall of the room before it touches the ground. The players hit the ball in turn. The ball must not bounce on the floor more than once before each player hits it; if a player fails to return the ball to the front wall or to hit the ball before it bounces twice, he loses the point. The court is covered and you don"t have to rely on the weather.CRICKET: Cricket is a game that only the English understand!
Cricket with laughter.mp4
It is believed that cricket was originally a children's game, but adults began to take an interest in it in the early 17th century. Over the next century, cricket rapidly grew in popularity in the south-east of England. From those times, reports of meetings between teams consisting of eleven players have been preserved. In the 18th century, cricket became the national English sport. A large role in the growth of its popularity was played by the fact that the amount of bets on the results of meetings was not strictly limited. Wealthy citizens formed their own teams, and the games attracted crowds of spectators to the sports grounds. Professional cricketers appeared.
The attached video contains funny incidents at major international cricket competitions. And, although it is difficult for us to immediately understand the rules of the game, we can appreciate the comic nature of the situations that arise.
Cricket is a typically English sport which foreigners can hardly understand. There are two teams of 11 players. Matches last from one to five days. Many people think it is a slow and boring game, but most Englishmen find it very exciting.
If you come to England in the summer time, you can hardly avoid seeing a game of cricket, especially at weekends or during a long, fine evening. You"ll, probably, pee from a window of a train a green field dotted with white figures all of whom seem to be doing absolutely nothing. It"s one of the mysterious charms of the game that baffles non-cricketing nations, this placidity , this elegant eventfulness.
And no English village is without its cricket field, its "village green", which is often "common land", the property of the people by ancient law. From the village "s oldest inhabitant to its youngest articulate child, you"ll find a readiness, even eagerness, to explain the game to you. Polo: polo - aristocrats also know how to play as a team!
polo - general introduction to the game.mp4
Polo is England's most elite sport. The club polo system creates a powerful system of property and educational qualifications for players. Plus – inflated requirements for origin. Everyone should be aristocrats - players and horses. In the United Kingdom, representatives of many generations of the royal family were passionate fans of this sport, and the grandson of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, Sir Winston Churchill, was among the truly talented players.
This team appearance a ball sport in which participants play on horseback and move the ball around the field using a special stick. The goal of the game is to hit the opponent's goal as many times as possible. The game originated many centuries ago in Persia and was revived in its modern form by English soldiers in India.
The featured video mostly features the annual Jack Wills Varsity Polo competition. The tournament is held on the field of the world's largest polo club - GUARDS club in Windsor, whose president is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The competition traditionally involves teams from Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, Eton and Harvard. Jack Wills, a well-known British collegiate sportswear brand, sponsors these events, along with renowned collegiate rugby and rowing tournaments.
Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Sometimes called "The Sport of Kings", it was started by Persians. Players score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a long-handled mallet. The traditional sport of polo is played at speed on a large grass field up to 300 yards (274.2 m) long by 160 yards (146.2 m) wide, and each polo team consists of four riders and their mounts. Field polo is played with a solid plastic ball, which has replaced the wooden ball in much of the sport. two hours and is divided into periods called chukkas (occasionally rendered as "chukkers"). Polo is played professionally in 16 countries. It was formerly, but is not currently, an Olympic sport.
Croquet: Croquet is all-weather and omnipresent!
Croquet - we play everywhere.mp4
It is believed that games with wooden hammer and balls came to England from Europe in the Middle Ages. Initially, they were simple - back in the 13th century, French peasants, hitting the balls with wooden hammers, sent them through the gates made of willow twigs. There were no uniform rules for a long time, and over the course of several centuries many variants of the game appeared. It is believed that billiard games arose from croquet in the 15th century, when they began to play on tables in enclosed spaces.
Today, croquet is a sports game in which participants, using special hammers on a long handle, push balls through hoops placed on the court in a certain order. In the first half of the 20th century, the game was included in the program of the Summer Olympic Games. Croquet is widespread all over the world due to its unpretentiousness, accessibility, undemanding nature of the court and the ability to create your own “shortened” version of the game depending on the existing conditions.
The most common type of croquet is, according to the international rules of The Croquet Association, the so-called classic English croquet. Also popular are golf croquet, garden croquet and the American Croquet Association's 9 Wicket croquet. This video illustrates the rules of the game and the accessibility of croquet in a variety of conditions for a variety of people.
Association croquet is the name of an advanced game of croquet, played at international level. It involves four balls teamed in pairs, with both balls going through every hoop for one pair to win. The game's distinguishing feature is the "croquet" shot: when certain balls hit other balls, extra shots are allowed. The six hoops are arranged three at each end of the court, with a center peg.
In association croquet one side takes the black and blue balls, the other takes red and yellow. At each turn, the player can choose to play with either of his balls for that turn. At the start of a turn, the player plays a stroke. If the player either hits the ball through the correct hoop ("runs" the hoop), or hits another ball (a "roquet"), the turn continues. Following a roquet, the player picks up his or her own ball and puts it down next to the ball that it hit. The next shot is played with the two balls touching: this is the "croquet stroke" from which the game takes its name. After the croquet stroke, the player plays a "continuation" stroke, during which the player may again attempt to make a roquet or run a hoop. Each of the other three balls may be roqueted once in a turn before a hoop is run, after which they become available to be roqueted again. The winner of the game is the team who completes the set circuit of six hoops (and then back again the other way), with both balls, and then strikes the center peg (making a total of 13 points per ball = 26).
The British are known to be great sports-lovers, so when they are neither playing, nor watching games, they like to talk about them. Many of the games we play now have come from Britain.
One of the most British games is cricket. It is often played in schools, colleges, universities and by club teams all over the country. Summer isn't summer without cricket. To many Englishmen cricket is both a game and a standard of behavior. When they consider anything unfair, they sometimes say: "That isn't cricket."
But as almost everywhere else in the world, the game which attracts the greatest attention is Association football, or soccer. Every Saturday from late August till the beginning of May, large crowds of people support their favorite sides in football grounds. True fans will travel from one end of the country to the other to see their team play. There are plenty of professional and amateur soccer clubs all over Britain. International football matches and the Cup Finals take place at Wembley.
Rugby football is also very popular, but it is played mainly by amateurs.
Next to football, the chief spectator sport in British life is horse-racing. A lot of people are interested in the races and risk money on the horse which they think will win. The Derby is perhaps the most famous single sporting event in the whole world.
Britain is also famous for motor-car racing, dog-racing, boat-racing, and even races for donkeys. The famous boat-race between the teams of Oxford and Cambridge attracts large crowds of people.
A great number of people play and watch tennis. Tennis tournaments at Wimbledon are known all over the world. The innumerable tennis courts of Britain are occupied by people between the ages of 16 and 60 who show every degree of skill - from practically helpless to the extremely able.
The British also like to play golf, baseball, hockey, grass-hockey. Various forms of athletics, such as running, jumping, swimming, boxing are also popular. You can sometimes hear that there are no winter sports in England. Of course the English weather is not always cold enough to ski, skate, or toboggan, but winter is a good season for hunting and fishing. Indeed, sport in one form or another is an essential part of daily life in Britain.
Sport in Britain
The British are known to be big sports fans. So when they're not playing or watching games, they love to talk about them. Many of the games we play now come from England.
One of the most British games is cricket. It is played very often in schools, colleges, universities and club teams throughout the country. Summer is not summer without playing cricket. For many Englishmen, cricket is both a game and a standard of behavior. When they think something is unfair, they sometimes say, "That's not according to the rules" (That's not cricket).
But, like almost everywhere else in the world, the game that attracts the most attention is football. Every Saturday from late August to early May, large crowds cheer on their favorite teams at the football fields. True fans travel from one end of the country to the other to see their team play. There are many professional and amateur football clubs throughout England. International football matches and cup finals are held at Wembley.
Rugby is also a very popular sport, but is played mainly by amateurs.
Next to football, the most spectacular sport for the British is horse racing. Many people are interested in racing and bet money on the horse they think will win. The Derby is perhaps the most famous sporting event in the entire world.
Great Britain is also famous for motor racing, dog racing, rowing, and even donkey racing. The famous boat race between Oxford and Cambridge attracts crowds.
A large number of people play and watch tennis. The tennis tournament at Wimbledon is famous all over the world. Countless tennis courts in the UK are filled with people aged from 16 to 60, demonstrating all levels of skill - from almost helpless to champion.
The British also love to play golf, baseball, hockey, and field hockey. Various types Athletics such as running, jumping, swimming, boxing are also popular. Sometimes you can hear that in England there is no winter species sports Of course, the English weather isn't always cold enough for skiing, skating or sledding, but winter is a good season for hunting and fishing. Indeed, sport in one form or another is an integral part of everyday life in England.
British people are very fond of sports. Sport is part of their normal life. The two most popular games are football and cricket.
Football, also called soccer, is the most popular sport in the United Kingdom. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own Football Leagues and national teams. Games are played on Saturday afternoons from August to April. In addition to the FL games there is a competition called the Football Association Cup. The Cup Final is played at Wembley Stadium (London) in May.
Cricket is considered to be the English National game. Its rules are very complicated. It is played by two teams of eleven men each, the player at a time tries to hit the ball with a bat. Golf is the Scottish national game. It originated in the XV century and the most famous golf course in the world, known as the Royal and Ancient Club, is at St. Andrew's.
Lawn tennis was first played in Britain in the late 19th century. The most famous British championship is Wimbledon, played annually during the last week of June and the first week of July.
Those are the most popular kinds of sport in the UK. But there are many other sports such as rugby, swimming, golf, horse-racing and the traditional fox-hunting.
Questions:
1. Are British fond of sports?
2. What is the most popular game in the UK?
3. Do all the parts of the UK have their Football Leagues and teams?
4. When and where the Football Association Cup final is played?
5. What is considered to be the English national game?
6. What is the name of the Scottish national game? When did it originate?
7. What are the other sports popular in the UK?
Sport in the UK
The British are very fond of sports. He is part of their life. The two most popular sports are football and cricket.
Football is the most popular sport in the United Kingdom. In England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland there are football leagues and national teams. Matches are played every Saturday from August to April. Apart from football league games, there is a championship called the FA Cup. The Cup final is held at Wembley Stadium (London) in May.
Cricket is considered the national English game. Its rules are very complex. It is played by two teams of eleven people each; the player tries to hit the ball with a bat.
Golf is the Scottish national game. It dates back to the 15th century, and the world's most famous golf school, the Royal and Ancient Club, is located in St. Andrew.
Tennis first appeared in Britain in late XIX century. The most famous British championship is Wimbledon, which is held annually in the last week of June - the first week of July.
These are the most popular sports in England. But there are others, such as rugby, swimming, rowing, horse racing and traditional fox hunting.
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Think of your favorite sport. Whatever it is, there is a good chance that it was first played in Britain, and an even better chance that its modern rules were first codified in Britain. The public schools of the Victorian era believed that organized competitive games had many psychological benefits. These games appealed to, and developed, the British sense of "fair play". You had to be a "good loser". To be a cheat was shameful, but to lose was just "part of the game". Team games were best, because they developed "team spirit".
Modem sport in Britain is very different. "Winning isn't everything" and "it"s only a game" are still well-known sayings, but to modern professionals, sport is clearly not just a game. These days, top players in any sport talk about having a "professional attitude" and doing their "job" well, even if, officially, their sport is still an amateur one.
Sport probably plays a more important part in people's lives in Britain than it does in most other countries. For a very large number, this is especially true for men, it is their main form of entertainment. Millions take part in some kind of sport at least once a week. Many millions more are regular spectators and follow one or more sports. There are hours of televised sport each week. Every newspaper, national or local, quality or popular, devotes several pages entirely to sport.
Sometimes the traditions which accompany an event can seem as important as the actual sporting contest. Wimbledon, for instance, is not just a tennis tournament. It means summer fashions, strawberries and cream, garden parties and long, warm English summer evenings.
Many of such events have become world-famous. Therefore, it is not only the British who tune in to watch. The Grand National, for example, attracts a television audience of 300 million. The cup finals of other countries often have better quality and more entertaining football on view - but more Europeans watch the English Cup Final than any other. The standard of British tennis is poor, and Wimbledon is only one of the world's major tournaments. But if you ask any top tennis player, you find that Wimbledon is the one they really want to win. Every footballer in the world dreams of playing at Wembley, every cricketer in the world of playing at Lord's.
