[Malevolent]

Their not rubbish their decent, consistent as well. Sure they dont dominate big sports like football, basketball , tennis but their one of the best at cricket and cycling. Far from rubbish just not that good.

[suicidaleffect]

(Original post by Drewski)
You're being deliberately obtuse and merely cherry picking examples. How does Spain do in Cricket or in either code of rugby? How does it do in track cycling? How does it compare in golf or snooker or darts? How does it compare in triathlon, in athletics or in winter sports?

The examples you pick out are laughable. How far back are you going with golf? Shall we count up the many English and British Majors winners down the years? The F1 star was so good he had to go to a French team based in and staffed almost entirely by Brits to win?

If you actually debate objectively, you'll find we fare no worse or better than any country around the world. Why are you so obsessed with Britain doing badly? The simple fact is we don't. You can be as pigheaded, ignorant and pessimistic as you want, you're only arguing up a blind alley and making yourself look hugely stupid.

Nobody outside the UK really gives a damn about darts or snooker.Darts is as much as a sport as Poker.

Spain are much better than Britain in worldwide popular more competitive sports such as tennis,football,basketball,tour de france and handball.

Not sports such as cricket which only about 5 countries take seriously.Plus England's success in cricket has a lot to do with the South Africans/foreigners in the team and a great foreign coach

[Drewski]

(Original post by suicidaleffect)
Nobody outside the UK really gives a damn about darts or snooker.Darts is as much as a sport as Poker.

Spian are much better than Britain in worldwide popular sports such as tennis,football,basketball,tour de france and handball.

Not sports such as cricket where only about 5 countries take seriously

The world's most populous country is currently the snooker hotbed, and a recent world champion is Australian, so that assertation is based on sheer ignorance.

Better is subjective. Take away Nadal and they pale into insignificance in tennis. Our cyclists are currently outperforming Spain's on both the road and track. Handball? As much a minority sport as rugby - albeit growing.

The ICC currently has 105 members.



So, the real question is why are you so obsessed with making it sound like Britain is hopeless? You've had 84 replies on this thread, the vast majority of which explaining exactly who you're talking out of your bottom.
You either don't know what you're talking about or are trolling. The longer it goes on, the more and more we all assume it's the second.

[Malevolent]

(Original post by Drewski)
The world's most populous country is currently the snooker hotbed, and a recent world champion is Australian, so that assertation is based on sheer ignorance.

Better is subjective. Take away Nadal and they pale into insignificance in tennis. Our cyclists are currently outperforming Spain's on both the road and track. Handball? As much a minority sport as rugby - albeit growing.

The ICC currently has 105 members.

So, the real question is why are you so obsessed with making it sound like Britain is hopeless? You've had 84 replies on this thread, the vast majority of which explaining exactly who you're talking out of your bottom.
You either don't know what you're talking about or are trolling. The longer it goes on, the more and more we all assume it's the second.

Actually i agree with the others but Spain have much much much better tennis players then Britain, they have Nicolas Almagro, David Ferrer and Fernando Verdasco so in that respect Spain kills Britain.

[suicidaleffect]

Half of South Africa B team are the best cricket team in the world yeaah.

England have proved over and over again that without the influence of a foreign coach and players that they are useless.

[Bobifier]

(Original post by suicidaleffect)
Compare this to Britain where tennis is probably in the top 4 most popular sport in the country and still no Grandslam winner since 1936.

I don't know how much tennis news you follow, but on this point I can only imagine you are sorely mistaken. The most frequently cited reason for Britain underperforming at Tennis is that, despite massive funding, the LTA have utterly failed to popularise the sport. That is to say, not enough people play it for us to reasonably expect to produce good players.

[Drewski]

(Original post by suicidaleffect)
Half of South Africa B team are the best cricket team in the world yeaah.

England have proved over and over again that without the influence of a foreign coach and players that they are useless.

You really are a broken record [aka "tool"], aren't you?
Care to come up with an original argument? Or care to point out the foreign coaches at the heart of British cycling - the best performing team out there?

[MancStudent098]

I think our main problem is that we undertake such a diverse amount of sport - we compete at a competitive world level in Cricket, Rugby Union, Rugby League, Football, Tennis, Golf, Boxing, Snooker, Darts and most of the sports that form part of the Olympics (4th highest number of golds at the last one) and probably lead the world in a whole bunch of minority interest sports I've barely even heard of.

Given that in a population of only 60m there's inevitably only so many people with innate sporting talent, and only so much funding, it's hard to put together teams any one of those sports that consistently dominate the world.

We may not be as good at rugby as New Zealand or as good at football as Brazil, but those are massively dominant sports in those countries.

[tsnake23]

(Original post by suicidaleffect)
Nobody outside the UK really gives a damn about darts or snooker.Darts is as much as a sport as Poker.

Spain are much better than Britain in worldwide popular more competitive sports such as tennis,football,basketball,tour de france and handball.

Not sports such as cricket which only about 5 countries take seriously.Plus England's success in cricket has a lot to do with the South Africans/foreigners in the team and a great foreign coach

The Olympics has a very diverse range of sports that have worldwide participation and all events are contested by the very best athletes around the world. The medals table is one of the best ways of comparing sporting talent between countries as it directly reflects each nation's achievements.

In 2008:

South Africa had 0 gold medals and 1 overall (yes ONE silver medal in a 50m population)
Spain had 5 gold medals and 18 overall.
UK had 18 gold medals and 47 overall.

We underachieve in tennis but overall the UK is easily one of the best sporting nations in the world.

[internet tough guy]

I think alot of it is due to how badly sport is done in school. Heres my two cents:

- Rugby is pretty much the primary sport from year 7-11, even though most kid would prefer football, (and girls have their rugby equivalent in netball). Theres a serious lack of variety and choice for those who don't like running at full pace and smashing their bodies into each other.

- 90% of P.E (or sports session, or whatever you called it) consisted of boring and general ****ty excercises. If we were lucky and if we had time (usually 5 mins before P.E ends ), the teacher may let us have a game (also conditional on us behaving ourselves which was a rarity since there was always the odd bastard who couldn't sit still when told or was messing about). Basically, P.E was boring because teachers made it that way by not allowing us to actually play, instead what we got were boring routines like running round in circles, jumping on those gymastic board things, weird excercises with hooler hoops, passing those beanbag things back and forth, moving our arms up and down. I've lost count of the number of 'basketball' sessions when it was just wasted on general ****ting around not doing anything fun, when really we should be having matches/games. Frustrating as hell, because I think most kids like sport and the general competition - at least to some degree.

[Mr Bee]

England do well in some sports. Cycling, Squash, rugby?, Cricket. But we are no match against Countries like Kenya in events like the 5000m. Sure, Mo Farah is doing alright lately. But how do you think he will really get on at the Olympics? A bit like Jessica Ennis. She is at the top of her game now, but yesterday, she got disqualified from Oslo. So think about what we do well in before what we fail at.


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Kevin J]

I blame the school set up.

US got it nailed.

[Idle]

(Original post by Mufasaa)
Tennis- We've had someone who's pretty good at it for a long time now, Henman and Murray weren't/aren't top class but they always did pretty well.

Murray is not top class? So being in the top 5 in the world for a couple of years and counting is not top class?

[Dan3va]

dont forget dressage

[Mufasaa]

(Original post by Idle)
Murray is not top class? So being in the top 5 in the world for a couple of years and counting is not top class?

He's not won any majors, until he does that he won't be top class in my opinion. If he was top 5 or 10 but had won a major or two then he would be.

[Idle]

(Original post by Mufasaa)
He's not won any majors, until he does that he won't be top class in my opinion. If he was top 5 or 10 but had won a major or two then he would be.

4th in the world, has been number 2. 22 titles including 8 Masters 1000 wins and 3 GS finals? That is top class, any tennis player would agree.

[Malevolent]

(Original post by Idle)
4th in the world, has been number 2. 22 titles including 8 Masters 1000 wins and 3 GS finals? That is top class, any tennis player would agree.

I disagree top class is Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. Until Murray wins that big prize of a major then he will just be very good. Top class is the high echelon of the players and i don't think hes there, hes one level below and well he needs a major to cement his status as top class.

[Idle]

(Original post by johnharris19944)
I disagree top class is Federer, Nadal, Djokovic. Until Murray wins that big prize of a major then he will just be very good. Top class is the high echelon of the players and i don't think hes there, hes one level below and well he needs a major to cement his status as top class.

You might disagree but anyone who plays or played tennis would disagree.

[Presenttime]

We're not rubbish at sport. Look at Jessica Ennis. We're probably going to come 4th in the olympics medals table, maybe even 3rd.

[Malevolent]

(Original post by Idle)
You might disagree but anyone who plays or played tennis would disagree.

Dont get me wrong i think hes very good but i dont put him up there as top class because thats what the other 3 i mentioned are. Until you get it done and win the big one then you dont get to stand with the other champions.