American scientists agree with me

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I can be the nicest guy in the world, until football then I turn into a complete headcase and get screaming my head off at the TV. I'd never fight or anything like that, that's just not me (as in I'm a complete wimp) but a few of my mates are banned from football grounds and have their passports taken off them when England play abroad. Makes them sound like complete pricks, but honestly, get to know them outside football and they're as nice as pie. Always help you out and do favours for you etc. I suppose it all depends on how much importance you put on your sports.

In the park watching a test match? I take it you mean local cricket? Or do you mean on the big screens often put up. There's always massive cinema screen type things at parks here when England are playing in a test. It's brilliant going to one of them, you feel like you've got your own little barmy army .

 

Ditto for me and a Packer game. And my aunt could make your head explode if a game lasted 5 hours.

 

Barmy Army is corect , football is the best !

 

No, at the actual ground watching the test match. Eden Park, for example.

 

To all you 'futball' fans I must say that what gets my heart to pumping is watching a good horseman (woman) showing off a well schooled horse.

 

Dressage, jumps, or... whatever do you call the combos of dressage, jumps and trail in EWnglish..., Nakia?

 

I used to watch a lot of football (soccer), but rugby has since been my favourite sport to watch because one side is always attacking. You cannot really play defensively in rugby, one side always has to attack, whereas in soccer you can hold the ball in your half for ages.

 

@Arabwell, not sure what you mean by combos. Dressage and jumping will usually appear together in a horse show but trail riding is unique because it covers long distances. Sometimes as much as 3 days. The main judgement is on the horse but the rider is judged on care of the horse and a couple of other things.
Jumping is the favorite of the general public here in the USA because it is more spectacular. Most people look at dressage and just see someone getting on a horse and riding around. You have to be horseback rider of at least a little skill to appreciate Dressage.

 

I can't talk of horsey stuff in English properly, I never picked up the terminology... but there's this combo thing that's done here that has the same horse/rider pair doing jumps, dressage andshort trail and the overall performance is what counts - not sure what to call it *shrugs' I thinkt he literal translation is something like "field"... I was rahter interested in those when I was younger.

 

Erm....that would be soccer as you guys call it. Your version of football came much later, and instead of coming up with an original name, you nicked the name of the most popular sport on the planet. Why someone would want to call a game where feet are hardly used football, is beyond my imagination, but i guess those helmets limit clear thinking.

 

Actually, now that I think about it, I reckon American Football is actually more comparable to cricket than to sport like rugby or soccer. Now this may sound insane at first, but there a few reasons why I say this:
1) Both cricket and American football last for several hours (with countless commercial breaks) compared to 80 or 90 minutes for rugby and soccer
2) Both sports are ‘fragmented’, in that there is a lot of standing around between short periods of action, compared to something like soccer where the ball is pretty much in motion for the whole game
3) The appeal of both sports is about the tactical buildup to each ‘fragment’ (the setup of each snap in American football and the delivery of the ball in cricket)
4) To the untrained eye, many of the fragments can seem completely boring. In American Football, you get so many incomplete downs where the attacking team drops the ball or only advances 1 metre and in cricket you get so many balls when no runs are scored.
5) In both sports, the drama is more of a ‘tension’ as you watch the manoeuvring that leads to something spectacular (like a great run or awesome touchdown catch in American Football; or a wicket or six in cricket)
6) Both sports have infinite statistical possibilities and various obscure records are always being broken (e.g. most yards rushing in a losing team or most wickets taken in the first innings of a test)
7) Both sports can look great in the highlights package at the end of the day (for people who only want to see the spectacular moments of the game)

 

Except in cricket, a big fat beergut isn't required to be on the defensive end of your team. It would make them look rather silly in those funny picknick outfits.

 

Also, both games require a similar volume of protective equipment, although a batsman wears most of his on his legs rather than his shoulders.

 

Thats nothing compared to the worlds fastest team sport - hurling . This makes football, rugby and american football look very girly indeed!

 

Fastest based on what? I thought pelote was the fastest sport?

 

Hmm, hurling looks like a variation of lacrosse (or vice-versa, probably). There are some major differences, but the basic idea (throwing a ball between goalposts using a stick) is pretty much the same. The funny thing is that at first I thought you said curling was the fastest sport.

 

Maybe this is something that is unique to American sports, but all of our major sports take a really long time to play. Hockey and basketball are probably the shortest, and even they routinely last 2 - 2.5 hours. Football easily last 3 hours, and baseball, depending on the pace of the game, frequently goes over 4 hours. I can't think of a single single significant sport in the U.S. that is finished in under 2 hours.

They both might have infinite statistical possibilities, but if you're into statistics, the sport of choice is baseball. The whole game is based on percentages really: Batting average and ERA are the most obvious, but there's OBP, slugging, WHIP, K/9, OBPS, and that's off the top of my head. Obviously, if you don't follow baseball, you have no idea what I'm talking about.

I think I'm a lot like Barmy Army in terms of my sports watching - but I follow all the sports he doesn't and vice versa.

A couple of questions for Barmy: Why do you consider an American baseball to be a "soft" ball? While I admit that it has a leather coating, and it differs from a cricket ball which is basically a spherical hockey puck (in terms of what it feels like) I can't see why you would think a baseball is soft - there really isn't any "give" to a baseball.

The sport you refer to as "rounders" sounds a whole lot like American softball, which is also considered primarily a female sport in the U.S. In fact one of the primary differences between baseball and softball (other than the whole underhanded pitching thing) is that baseball is played with what is commonly called a "hardball".

 

When I said 'soft' I didn't mean like squidgy soft. It's just that the leather on the outside of a baseball is kind of soft. I mean, you can't squeeze it but there's a certain amount of give. Whereas a cricket ball is rock solid and bigger and whole lot heavier. You certainly know about it more if a cricket ball hits you than a baseball.

 

I think a cricket ball is probably a bit harder than a baseball but I think I'd know about it if I was hit by either of them.

Both baseball and cricket are chock full of statistics. To a certain extent, cricket would be much less interesting without all the statistics. I have a good friend who is fanatical about both cricket AND baseball (a very rare combination, given all our other discussions about how the two sports are not actually both big in any one country) and it is no coincidence that he is also a statistics freak.

Crickte is full of statistics because every action by a player is individually measurable, as opposed to something like soccer where it is more subjective as to how many tackles someone did or how well they controlled the ball.

Fo example, last week, New Zealand fast bowler Shane Bond became the bowler with the best strike rate in the history of one day cricket (of bowlers who have bowled more than 1000 balls). Strike rate is number of balls bowled divided by number of wickets taken. This differs from the usual measure of a bowler's ability which is number of runs conceded divided by number of wickets taken.

 

One of the things that might be confusing this issue is that there are two kind of baseballs: a softball and a baseball. Softballs are a bit bigger than baseballs, and as their name suggests, softer. Baseballs, OTOH, are just slightly smaller than your fist (well, MY fist anyway) and "hard as a rock", as Barmy put it. No doubt many of you know this, but I wanted to make sure everyone did.