[Drewski]

(Original post by fortransexual)
hrmn yeah I don't doubt you heard this as I think i've heard similar before, I just wanted to know where it's coming from because I think the way 'player' is defined is likely the root of this unusual statistic

From my understanding it was based on the number of people who've ever picked up a club in any form.

Although where miniature golf stands on that, I'm not sure...

[NDGAARONDI]

(Original post by Maddog Jones)

And the funniest thing is that I don't even like rugby. But every tin pot negger has been a bitter Welshman who didn't like the fact that I stated England are better than Spain at rugby. All I stated was that England have performed the best at the World Cup out of the northern hemisphere sides as it would be stupid to exclude New Zealand, South Africa and Australia in competitive matches. I'd have chosen golf, one of my sports instead.

[Steevee]

(Original post by fortransexual)
Errr what are you talking about the effect of budget for with football for?
What has the premier league got to do with the our international rank? But while we are at it... I might point out that the england squad contains numerous players from manchester united, manchester city, arsenal and chelsea... they are not exactly bottom of the barrel teams in the prem.

budget is much less of an obstacle for a poor person to get into football (which requires goals and a ball) than it is in cricket (pads, bats,ball training nets, managed playing surface) and golf (clubs, course fees, lessons, numerous expensive accessories) so the ranking isn't simply a toss up between how rich and large your country is like cricket.

looking at the cricket rankings I see India, Pakistan and Bangladesh with large populations - but they happen to be rather poor and I don't know what % of their youth get any kind of opportunity to become professional cricket players... as soon as they get richer England will fall behind.

The majority of the high ranked teams are commonwealth type countries with lower populations and about the same amount of money so it seems pretty logical that we would be higher up. Not really a big achievement.

You could have written your summary - "cricket is played by some of the poorest countries in the world and a few others that are well off but with smaller populations than england"

Meanwhile in football we are ahead of a lot of countries that are actually large AND developed.

Becaue the English football team have a **** ton of money spent on them.

Affluence really isn't a barrier to cricket playing in the likes of India, kids play it from a very early age, those that show talent go to clubs where bats and such are provided for them, much like in England, and if they are good, they progress.

I think the point is rather, England are good at football. England are great, best in the world at a great many other sports. Maybe not as many countries play those sports, but we are still rather good at them. And simply using the 'more people play it' argument, then obviously Golf is best.

[Mufasaa]

(Original post by Maddog Jones)

England at RWC - Won 2003, Runner up 2007, lost to same side Wales lost to in knockouts 2011. His point stands.

[Spaz Man]

England has the top test cricket side in the world

Great Britain came 4th in the medal table out of 80 countries in the 2008 Olympic games.

The English rugby team won the 2003 world cup and got to the final of the 2007 world cup.

What are you on about OP?

[fortransexual]

(Original post by Steevee)
Becaue the English football team have a **** ton of money spent on them.

Affluence really isn't a barrier to cricket playing in the likes of India, kids play it from a very early age, those that show talent go to clubs where bats and such are provided for them, much like in England, and if they are good, they progress.

I think the point is rather, England are good at football. England are great, best in the world at a great many other sports. Maybe not as many countries play those sports, but we are still rather good at them. And simply using the 'more people play it' argument, then obviously Golf is best.

What does that matter? you can't buy international players for your national team right... you do realise this? (I would have thought you did but you keep repeating this irrelevant fact about our league being rich which is completely disconnected from our national team.)

I dispute that more people play golf than football... only in a few countries is golf not reserved for the very rich - even in the UK I only think of about 20 out of ~500 people that played golf out of those I knew at my school - and that was at a private school too, whereas I would struggle to find 20 people that didn't play football - I refuse to believe that this is unusual and all the other schools are brimming with aspiring golfers - this statistic is totally inconsistent with observation/common sense! I don't even think you could pass through the state school system without meeting football in PE at least even if you never went out on the playground - the same is not true for golf. I've watched enough American TV to know that they don't do golf classes in high school either.

Most people in this country are most interested in football... combining this with vastly higher salaries on offer means that football takes our best athletes and playing at club level is much more of a big deal. Why do we do worse at football than other sports? The competition is stiffer in football that's why.

We had two players on the england (youth) squad for rugby at my school and both of them completed 9 gcses and A levels, played for our school in term time and now play for clubs via university sports scholarships

We had one person make the england (youth) team for football and he had to leave at 16 with 5 gcses to keep up with the training and would never be allowed to train in school for risk of injury.

Your view is like saying that british men are bad at sports because our women normally do better in comparison at womens events... whereas really this is just because we are one of the few countries to put any kind of investment into womens team sport. This doesn't make the women more talented than the men in absolute terms though... quite clearly.

[Drewski]

(Original post by fortransexual)
I dispute that more people play golf than football... only in a few countries is golf not reserved for the very rich - even in the UK I only think of about 20 out of ~500 people that played golf out of those I knew at my school - and that was at a private school too, whereas I would struggle to find 20 people that didn't play football - I refuse to believe that this is unusual and all the other schools are brimming with aspiring golfers - this statistic is totally inconsistent with observation/common sense! I don't even think you could pass through the state school system without meeting football in PE at least even if you never went out on the playground - the same is not true for golf. I've watched enough American TV to know that they don't do golf classes in high school either.

That's only if you're working on the patently ridiculous assumption that the only people who can 'do sports' are <18.

Look around again at the age of 35/40/45+ and see what the majority of your friends are playing then.

[fortransexual]

(Original post by Drewski)
That's only if you're working on the patently ridiculous assumption that the only people who can 'do sports' are <18.

Look around again at the age of 35/40/45+ and see what the majority of your friends are playing then.

I don't think people in the top 10 in the world make it to 18 without playing golf so whatever that number is it doesn't contribute to how good our best people are

[Manchester United]

We're brilliant at sports?

We have the rank 4 tennis player, two Formula 1 champions currently racing, a very good football team, a brilliant rugby team, an excellent cricket team, good golfers and a few other chaps in the pub sports.

We do well in the olympics etc..

Boxing wise, we're declining though.

[craglyboy]

(Original post by Drewski)
Golf is, in fact, the #1 sport by players in the world.

Your right, although I have heard in the UK fishing is the most participated sport again not sure where.

Coming from a background of golf the junior participation is this country is very high. And the competitiveness is very high. I used to play at a high level but the issue does arise with costs and getting to places.

I think you can see how played it is also by the sponsorship pumped into the game look at the tiger woods, consistently the highest earner in sports for ten years and only a tenth of his annual earnings comes from prize money. A lot of adults do play but I know very few who didn't play when they were younger, the retention of participants is high because of how they even the fields with handicap to make everyone competitive unlike a lot of other sports.

[craglyboy]

(Original post by fortransexual)
What does that matter? you can't buy international players for your national team right... you do realise this? (I would have thought you did but you keep repeating this irrelevant fact about our league being rich which is completely disconnected from our national team.)

I dispute that more people play golf than football... only in a few countries is golf not reserved for the very rich - even in the UK I only think of about 20 out of ~500 people that played golf out of those I knew at my school - and that was at a private school too, whereas I would struggle to find 20 people that didn't play football - I refuse to believe that this is unusual and all the other schools are brimming with aspiring golfers - this statistic is totally inconsistent with observation/common sense! I don't even think you could pass through the state school system without meeting football in PE at least even if you never went out on the playground - the same is not true for golf. I've watched enough American TV to know that they don't do golf classes in high school either.

Most people in this country are most interested in football... combining this with vastly higher salaries on offer means that football takes our best athletes and playing at club level is much more of a big deal. Why do we do worse at football than other sports? The competition is stiffer in football that's why.

We had two players on the england (youth) squad for rugby at my school and both of them completed 9 gcses and A levels, played for our school in term time and now play for clubs via university sports scholarships

We had one person make the england (youth) team for football and he had to leave at 16 with 5 gcses to keep up with the training and would never be allowed to train in school for risk of injury.

Your view is like saying that british men are bad at sports because our women normally do better in comparison at womens events... whereas really this is just because we are one of the few countries to put any kind of investment into womens team sport. This doesn't make the women more talented than the men in absolute terms though... quite clearly.

With regards to your football training. We have sod all contact time with our youth players in comparison to those on the contact in particular Spain due to rules that have been set by the FA so that football doesn't "impact" a child's life when developing. Thankfully recently this contact time has been increased. If you were a prospect of that quality would you want to play for your school with the greatest of respect your ability isn't going to be enhances at that level is it.

With regards to golf yes anyone can play football at school but that doesn't make you a footballer. To start golf there is a lot of commitment first to buy clubs but get into a club and with all that means retention is a lot higher than other sports, my brother currently is 13 been playing football for 3 years in a team now and is quitting as are a lot of players on his team. In golf once you get a handicap especially as a junior you see very few people quit.

More people might try football but that doesn't mean there are more footballers in this country.

[Steevee]

(Original post by fortransexual)
What does that matter? you can't buy international players for your national team right... you do realise this? (I would have thought you did but you keep repeating this irrelevant fact about our league being rich which is completely disconnected from our national team.)

I dispute that more people play golf than football... only in a few countries is golf not reserved for the very rich - even in the UK I only think of about 20 out of ~500 people that played golf out of those I knew at my school - and that was at a private school too, whereas I would struggle to find 20 people that didn't play football - I refuse to believe that this is unusual and all the other schools are brimming with aspiring golfers - this statistic is totally inconsistent with observation/common sense! I don't even think you could pass through the state school system without meeting football in PE at least even if you never went out on the playground - the same is not true for golf. I've watched enough American TV to know that they don't do golf classes in high school either.

Most people in this country are most interested in football... combining this with vastly higher salaries on offer means that football takes our best athletes and playing at club level is much more of a big deal. Why do we do worse at football than other sports? The competition is stiffer in football that's why.

We had two players on the england (youth) squad for rugby at my school and both of them completed 9 gcses and A levels, played for our school in term time and now play for clubs via university sports scholarships

We had one person make the england (youth) team for football and he had to leave at 16 with 5 gcses to keep up with the training and would never be allowed to train in school for risk of injury.

Your view is like saying that british men are bad at sports because our women normally do better in comparison at womens events... whereas really this is just because we are one of the few countries to put any kind of investment into womens team sport. This doesn't make the women more talented than the men in absolute terms though... quite clearly.

We have one of the richest and best domestic leagues, we have a very rich national team, and yet our national team still fails to achieve world success. This is the quite obvious point I'm making.

You're making a mistake in reasoning here though, because we're talking about playing competativley, and proper competition. I was State schooled, and I knew around 5 people who were involved in Golf competitions regularly, and around 20-40 that played Golf. Yes, I knew more that played football in a casual sense. But the amount of people that played for decent clubs was around the same level of people who played golf seriously. So your contention is there is more competition in Football, but the fact that people play football casually does not equal serious competition. God knows I played football and rugby for quite a few years, that doesn't mean I was ever competition for the people that were good at the sport.

Football doesn't take our best athletes, FYI. Serious athletics does How do you qualify the stiffness of competition?

It's funny you mention that. I've known 3 England Youth and 2 full England players of Rugby, I've known 2 serious golfers and one serious Tennis player, also one Enlgand Number 1 Judo practitioner in his age and weight class. The Rugby players kept up their studies whilst training hard. The Golfers and Tennis players did the same. The Judo champion devoted all of his spare time to the sport. The football player left school at 16. You claim this is because football training is harder? I think it much rather has something to do with football players. Football is big money, of course they don't want an investment injured. Typical football players, the ones I've known, think they when they make it they'll be Ronaldo or Rooney, so they live only for their football, this perpetuates a cycle. I certainly don't think an England football player trains mesurabley harder than an England rugby player. Quite the opposite, football doesn't have half of the intracacies as Rugby.

I agree, which is why I considered the amount of involvement as compared to other sports when the point was raised. However, I contend that we are better at other sports than football, in no small part due to the attitudes around football, the situation of our domestic league and other factors aswell.

[see-are]

(Original post by suicidaleffect)
Even though we've invented most of these modern sports such as football, tennis, cricket, rugby etc.

Serious answers please.

Britain is fantastic at sport.You'd expect it as we have one of the highest player to population ratios overall and have excellent facilities compared to most.

If you knew anything about sport you would realise that the overhyped expectations that the media create, and subsequent negative portrayal of British sport is to sell papers not reflect the God's honest truth.

[fortransexual]

(Original post by craglyboy)
With regards to your football training. We have sod all contact time with our youth players in comparison to those on the contact in particular Spain due to rules that have been set by the FA so that football doesn't "impact" a child's life when developing. Thankfully recently this contact time has been increased. If you were a prospect of that quality would you want to play for your school with the greatest of respect your ability isn't going to be enhances at that level is it.

With regards to golf yes anyone can play football at school but that doesn't make you a footballer. To start golf there is a lot of commitment first to buy clubs but get into a club and with all that means retention is a lot higher than other sports, my brother currently is 13 been playing football for 3 years in a team now and is quitting as are a lot of players on his team. In golf once you get a handicap especially as a junior you see very few people quit.

More people might try football but that doesn't mean there are more footballers in this country.

the context for comparison was where golfer had been defined as somebody who had picked up a golf club - So I think trying football is the relevant equivalent. So it makes sense if you're not trying to take me out of context.

I also mentioned already that people who are taking up golf at a later age and keeping up with it because it's less effort are not really relevant to our leading edge of golfers who will have been training from a young age.

Also if we are looking at the number british professional footballers paid to play for any club around the world it would be a lot higher than our professional golfers

golf only has more players in the least important, most irrelevant context - but you can have that if you want it...

The point I was making was that the english potential football players spend more time on it than the english potential cricket/rugby players - what happens in spain doesn't come in to how difficult it is to get to england football standard compared to our other sports.

[CSM1996]

I dislike how when football you are only referring it to England, but saying tennis you say "we." No, Andy Murray is Scottish.. there is no "we" :/

[fortransexual]

(Original post by Steevee)
We have one of the richest and best domestic leagues, we have a very rich national team, and yet our national team still fails to achieve world success. This is the quite obvious point I'm making.

You're making a mistake in reasoning here though, because we're talking about playing competativley, and proper competition. I was State schooled, and I knew around 5 people who were involved in Golf competitions regularly, and around 20-40 that played Golf. Yes, I knew more that played football in a casual sense. But the amount of people that played for decent clubs was around the same level of people who played golf seriously. So your contention is there is more competition in Football, but the fact that people play football casually does not equal serious competition. God knows I played football and rugby for quite a few years, that doesn't mean I was ever competition for the people that were good at the sport.

Football doesn't take our best athletes, FYI. Serious athletics does How do you qualify the stiffness of competition?

It's funny you mention that. I've known 3 England Youth and 2 full England players of Rugby, I've known 2 serious golfers and one serious Tennis player, also one Enlgand Number 1 Judo practitioner in his age and weight class. The Rugby players kept up their studies whilst training hard. The Golfers and Tennis players did the same. The Judo champion devoted all of his spare time to the sport. The football player left school at 16. You claim this is because football training is harder? I think it much rather has something to do with football players. Football is big money, of course they don't want an investment injured. Typical football players, the ones I've known, think they when they make it they'll be Ronaldo or Rooney, so they live only for their football, this perpetuates a cycle. I certainly don't think an England football player trains mesurabley harder than an England rugby player. Quite the opposite, football doesn't have half of the intracacies as Rugby.

I agree, which is why I considered the amount of involvement as compared to other sports when the point was raised. However, I contend that we are better at other sports than football, in no small part due to the attitudes around football, the situation of our domestic league and other factors aswell.

would you stop trying to make out that the answer is '...ohhh so obvious'
I'm not going to be bluffed by you so you don't need to 'face palm' everything I say. Also if you are going to mention the domestic league in every post can you at least explain how you think that effects our national team? (instead of just repeating that we have a rich domestic league for a... what.. 5th time or something now)

anyway If I can't convince you that it's harder for a young kid with good genes prepared to train to get onto the england football team than it is for the other sports - I don't need to, we can just accept that it is the same as you would still be wrong:

* same level of competition to get into the national team across sports <-- (I would say harder but you're still wrong if it's the same, as you will see)

*national football team has more funding and investment <--- as you keep saying

yet...

*we do worse in football internationally compared to the other sports <--- as you keep saying


conclusion:

the competition in international football is harder than it is for rugby and cricket

(other possible conclusions: *race/genes we are not well adapted for it - not valid because we have a diverse population

*our training and management must be weaker once people have made it onto the team - possible, but highly unlikely since as you say... we've got lots of cash and money talks for training and management)


now I should probably be facepalming because that is just the logical consequence of your own arguments.

[fortransexual]

(Original post by CSM1996)
I dislike how when football you are only referring it to England, but saying tennis you say "we." No, Andy Murray is Scottish.. there is no "we" :/

probably because andy murray plays for the UK

whereas there is no UK team for football - it is split for some reason

[Rarrgh]

It seems other countries just try harder. England has been relatively good at sports throughout the years so now people take everything for granted and just assume we should be good at sports.

[CSM1996]

(Original post by fortransexual)
probably because andy murray plays for the UK

whereas there is no UK team for football - it is split for some reason

He plays for Scotland, they only put UK because England don't have any good tennis players. But when Andy Murray plays crap he is Scottish and not Uk :/

[Alex17595]

(Original post by Drewski)
You forget that the nations you mention pretty much solely concentrate on those sports. What else do they do in NZ? They have the 2 codes of rugby and..... sheep chasing. We spread our talent around, we're diverse. We are the world leaders in a number of sports.
Golf.
Sailing [all forms].
Snooker.
Track Cycling.
Darts.
Triathlon.

We've got world class athletes in every arena imaginable from Taekwondo to diving to skeleton bobsleigh to skiing to driving to riding...

Good point, people forget other sports that are not the most popular....