English sport in meltdown

[BoyBrumby]

Traditionally we tend to go through periods of feast & famine, success-wise, but we're bloody starving just now:

-Our football team had a World Cup that really redefined the term "mediocre" & we're in real danger of not qualifying for the European Championships after being humiliated by a not-that-good-really Croatian team.

-Our Rugby Union team stumbles from defeat to humiliation followed by defeat scarcely three years after being crowned World Champions with the clubs & the RFU taking in turn to blame each other.

-Our cricket team is being roundly thrashed in Australia & we've been cack in ODIs for the better part of a decade now.

-Our Rugby League team (ok, Great Britain technically, but Carney is the only non-Pom) again failed to make the tri-nations final & we haven't won a test series against Australia since before even I was born.

What I want to know is why? We are absolutely sports-obsessed as a nation (witness the credibility-free Blair government's craven attempts to curry public favour with honours for our Ashes-winning cricket team & World Cup-winning Union team in 2003) yet we are utterly unable to sustain success in any team sport for any length of time. Do we simply lack the mental resilience of our Aussie cousins? Has our sedentary 21st Century lifestyle raised a nation of couch-potatoes?

And I haven't even mentioned Zara Phillips winning the BBC Sports Personality of the year yet.....

 

[superkingdave]

-Our Rugby League team (ok, Great Britain technically, but Carney is the only non-Pom) again failed to make the tri-nations final & we haven't won a test series against Australia since before even I was born.

Gareth Carvell?

 

[BoyBrumby]

Gareth Carvell?

I presumed he was a plastic Taff a la Harris, but could be wrong.

 

[Matteh]

I'd say the Rugby Union one was the one to be most concerned about. It looks like it's in a state of utter shambles atm.

With the football, we still made the Quarters (as usual) despite our average displays.
Cricket, we've just won a couple of series in the summer and we're losing to the best team in the world. Not really genned up enough about international Rugby League to comment.

 

[BoyBrumby]

I'd say the Rugby Union one was the one to be most concerned about. It looks like it's in a state of utter shambles atm.

With the football, we still made the Quarters (as usual) despite our average displays.
Cricket, we've just won a couple of series in the summer and we're losing to the best team in the world. Not really genned up enough about international Rugby League to comment.

That's sort of my point tho. In both Union & cricket we very recently beat the best in the world & seemed content to rest on the laurels of those achievements. We've certainly gone backwards in both.

As for football, we have the richest & arguably best league in the world in the Premiership, but we haven't won anything of note for 40 years! We passed over the most gifted British manager of his generation in favour of an amiable coach who shares the ruddy complexion of his former boss but little of the great man's motivational skills. A quarter-final is the least we could've expected.

 

[steds]

Carney is the only non-Pom

From our last game: Pryce, Senior, Raynor, McGuire, Horne, Fielden, Peacock, Ellis, Wilkin.

 

[superkingdave]

yeah we'll be buggered when it goes to 4 nations

 

[Chubb]

Peter Roebuck will tell you it's because of the closure of the mines, the rejection of stoicism in public schools (as if all English sportsmen either worked in a colliery or were privately educated before 1980), and that as a result we're obsessed, and I quote "with pork pies and clever dicks", the whole nation now largely consists of ignorant, racist, xenophobic, drunken louts, and what sporting culture we have is obsessed with the individual rather than the team.

I say cricket is strong but Australia are just too good right now, I still think England could beat any other side in the world, and there are plenty of Englishmen doing really well in other sports, golf, squash, badminton, boxing and track cycling especially.

I do think Union is in serious trouble, though. There has been a certain amount of resting on laurels but there were structural problems that the brilliant players and coach England had glossed over, but have really come home to roost once they retired. They've stayed playing a forward dominated game when most of the rest of the world have focused on the backs.

 

[steds]

we haven't won a test series against Australia since before even I was born.

As you've said, we tend to go through periods of feast & famine, except in the period where we could have feasted - the mid-late 80s/very early 90s, we came up against Australia teams containing guys like Wally Lewis, Mal Meninga, Peter Sterling, Brett Kenny, Laurie Daley, etc.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Peter Roebuck will tell you it's because of the closure of the mines, the rejection of stoicism in public schools (as if all English sportsmen either worked in a colliery or were privately educated before 1980), and that as a result we're obsessed, and I quote "with pork pies and clever dicks", the whole nation now largely consists of ignorant, racist, xenophobic, drunken louts, and what sporting culture we have is obsessed with the individual rather than the team.

I say cricket is strong but Australia are just too good right now, I still think England could beat any other side in the world, and there are plenty of Englishmen doing really well in other sports, golf, squash, badminton, boxing and track cycling especially.

I do think Union is in serious trouble, though. There has been a certain amount of resting on laurels but there were structural problems that the brilliant players and coach England had glossed over, but have really come home to roost once they retired. They've stayed playing a forward dominated game when most of the rest of the world have focused on the backs.

WRT cricket, we haven't been beating everyone else tho, have we? We went from winning the Ashes to losing in Pakistan & even failed to beat a Sri Lankan team at home who're very much in a transitional phase. In my mind we spent rather too long congratulating ourselves on a job well done.

As for the other sports, I know v little about squash, badmington or track cycling (I suppose we could charitably call them of selective appeal to the public), but in golf there has been no majors since Faldo's Masters in 1996 (and that took a jib of absolutely momumental proportions from Greg Norman) and (I think) Clinton Woods & Junior Witter are the only current English world champion boxers from 17 weight divisions with 4 (respected) titles in each weight. Hatton will probably win a belt the next time he fights, but that's still only 3 champions out of 68 possibles.

 

[steds]

Still have darts.

 

[superkingdave]

We're okay at snooker as well

 

[steds]

We're okay at snooker as well

Current World Champion: Scottish
Current UK Champion: Chinese (until tomorrow)
Current Grand Prix holder: Australian
Current Malta Cup holder: Irish
Current Welsh Open Champion: English
Current China Open Champion: Welsh
Current Northern Ireland Trophy Holder: Chinese

1 out of 7 ranking tournaments isn't too bad, I suppose...

 

[Scaly piscine]

An Englishman hasn't won the World Scrabble Championships for 13 years either...

 

[steds]

The thread title says sport, SP.

 

[superkingdave]

We're no Scotland, but we hold our own. We've done alright recently in the worlds before Dott's win last year. The lack of youngsters called Davis probably hampers us

 

[Chubb]

As for the other sports, I know v little about squash, badmington or track cycling (I suppose we could charitably call them of selective appeal to the public)

I tend to follow squash because I play it, and apparently (there was a poll in the Guardian about a week ago) more people play squash regularly than cricket or Union. (about 500,000 people play squash each week and roughly 350,000 play cricket). But it had serious problems viz. spectator numbers because it is very boring to watch at pro level, pros are just too good, it all comes down to absolutely minute mistakes on five minute rallies, and also people think it's just played by stockbrokers in their lunch breaks. Right now, 3 of the world's top 10 men are English, Nick Matthew (5), James Willstrop (8) and Lee Beachill (10) All three of those guys have been higher ranked before I think, and recently retired Peter Nicol was No. 1 for quite a while (but he was a Scot who defected).

There are another 3 English women in the top 10, Tania Bailey, Vicky Botwright and Jenny Duncalf as well as another World No. 3 Vanessa Atkinson who defected to Holland.

 

[PhoenixFire]

Our cricket team isn't that bad. The Ashes have been a case of Australia being awesome, and England losing it at crucial points. We beat Pakistan and Sri Lanka convincingly in the summer.

 

[superkingdave]

Our cricket team isn't that bad. The Ashes have been a case of Australia being awesome, and England losing it at crucial points. We beat Pakistan and Sri Lanka convincingly in the summer.

1-1 test series followed by a 5-0 ODI loss is a convincing win now is it?

 

[PY]

IMO, the England cricket team hasn't done well since the Ashes.

We lost in Pakistan, we drew in India (I doubt I'll ever fully celebrate a draw), drew against Sri Lanka when we could and should've thumped them and beat up Pakistan in friendly conditions for our strike bowlers. And we've somehow managed to hoodwink people into thinking we had a chance in the Ashes against an Aussie side which hasn't done anything but win Test matches since 2005 except one where it took a beast of an effort from one man to get a draw out of them.

I'm not generally a doom-and-gloom character when it comes to sport but it has to be said that we're on a bit of a downer in terms of the national sports.

Union = disgrace, football could swing either way. We'll come out of it pretty soon though I think but we could be on for a hiding in the upcoming WCs though.