4 ms·
On the flipside of this i think i learnt a lot about myself on the rugby pitch around this age. There is a lot to take away from it, simple things like organis
by swarnie 5y ago
On the flipside of this i think i learnt a lot about myself on the rugby pitch around this age.
There is a lot to take away from it, simple things like organisation and schedule keeping to team building, sportsmanship and determination.
Cold winter morning / evenings on the pitch or at the lake made me a better person im sure.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago> Football is a gentleman's game played by ruffians, and rugby is a ruffian's game played by gentlemen.
- arethuza 5y agoI know it's a terrible cliche but the old joke that "Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen" isn't entirely inaccurate. I had to play football at the extremely low ranking state school I went to and found the whole experience utterly miserable. My son attended a public school and played rugby there and I enjoyed watching him play and he seemed to get a lot out of it, while the on the pitch experience was far rougher than football the culture around the game seemed far more civilised. Of course that could just be the context of the different type of school but I thought it went deeper than that. Edit: A nice touch at our school PE department was that they were mostly ex Paras and they seemed to treat us more like recruits than schoolkids. There was one ex Royal Marine who while working us just as hard was at least good natured about it, whereas the others seemed to be in a state of continual anger.
- eru 5y agoFor non-British readers: a public school in Britain might not be what you expect it to be. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
- the_af 5y ago> "Football is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans, and Rugby is a hooligans’ game played by gentlemen" In Argentina at least, football is linked to the people, low and upper class; it's a "popular" sport. In contrast, Rugby is linked to the elite; mostly well to do spoiled kids (in the public perception, at least). There were a couple of beatings/murders linked to spoiled rich kids who were Rugby players, enough that in our public perception today a Rugby player is definitely not considered a "gentleman" but a rich brat potentially prone to violence.
- arethuza 5y agoThere is definitely an element of elitism in the UK around rugby, I can't deny that. However, I'd draw the comparison between a large crowd of rugby supporters leaving a match and a similar sized crowd of football supporters. I used to live near the Easter Road football ground in Edinburgh and that was pretty unpleasant and threatening on match days (particularly when Glasgow Rangers were playing...). I've never encountered the same level of sheer nastiness from a rugby crowd (and Edinburgh gets a lot of them) as from football crowd. I remember once getting the last train from Glasgow to Edinburgh the day of an Old Firm match - one set of supporters at one end of the carriage, the other set of supporters at the other end and a few of us non-combatants sitting in the middle desperately trying to pretend that nothing was happening. That was fun. NB Scotland does have a weird sectarian angle to football which doesn't help - although I don't think this is nearly as bad as it used to be.
- the_af 5y agoOh, the fans can be rough, agreed! Not a soccer fan and so I don't go to watch matches (TV set for me, if at all). But yes, rival football fans can get nasty. They scare me. I was thinking more about the actual players. It's also not a real statistic, just public perception: that Rugby players are spoiled rich kids prone to beating up other kids if they don't like the color of their skin.