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Over the last few years (or longer) what have British Sportsmen & women achieved in world sport? Apart from thrashing Germany 5-1 not much else.
The Wembley stadium situation is a complete joke and an absolute shambles and makes us a laughing stock when compared to the “Millenium Stadium”, “Stade de France” and Australian national stadium projects. What hope have we got of ever staging an Olympic games with our facilities?
We rely too much on the 1966 World Cup win and other former glories, when other countries are steaming ahead winning modern tournaments.
We always seem to have the potential to be world-beaters, but we end up under achieving.
In players like Owen, Beckham and Gerrard, plus great up and coming under 21 talents, we have the potential to rule world football for years to come. But will we??
England are always scrapping through World and Euro Championship qualifying stages, many times only just managing to beat part time no hopers (albeit in difficult conditions). When are we going to breeze through these and qualify in style?
What got me thinking about this topic was our rather pathetic medal haul in the current Winter Olympics.
Alex Coomber won a bronze medal in the “Skeleton Bob”, where you basically slide down the bobsleigh circuit on a metal tea-tray, and the women’s curling team is guaranteed at least a silver medal. Two pretty low key “sports” that we are now pathetically raving about because of our amazing success, when America, Italy, France etc are all winning loads of gold medals every day in more higher profile events.
I know that part of this is because we are not a winter country in the scale of many other colder climate countries, but a lot of it is still to do with talent and funding.
National Lottery funding and taxes are giving these under achievers the chance to enjoy themselves in the mountains costs totalling about £3million. And there’s the £2million the British Olympic Association has spent from the revenue gained from corporate sponsorship.
Two snowboarders received a grant of £142,000 in the last year from the lottery fund. They trained in the American Rocky Mountains, French Alps and Italian Dolomites. But what did they achieve to pay off this huge investment?? Absolutely nothing.
The same can be said for the £850,000 wasted over the last couple of years on our bobsleigh teams.
Look at the summer Olympics; we’ve had a few achievements in the last few years on the track and field, but what about the swimming?
Like Australia we are a nation surrounded by water (although they do have a great climate), in the last games I don’t think we won a single medal in swimming, and our team admitted they performed poorly.
We have indoor training facilities but wheres the talent?
Our recent Davis Cup tennis loss to Sweden shows how lacking in depth British tennis is.
Tim and Greg (the Canadian import) are world-class players, but in the tight competition of the Davis Cup, we had no other talent to help them out. The Swedes had three decent players to use enabling them to rest more, whereas Tim & Greg had to play every game.
Then there’s Wimbledon. We build our hopes up every year; Tim gets through a tough and epic encounter only to lose to a relative nobody.
In rugby union we are currently ranked number 1, and our Six Nations form is awesome and hopefully we can go on to win the next World Cup.
Why can’t we be better at basketball & ice hockey? Lack of funding and sponsorship plus the fact that most players in the U.K leagues are washed up yanks keeping out young British talent.
Those sports are huge in the U.S, and they even show college basketball and American Football on TV.
We are getting better at cricket, we had great success in Pakistan, but against Australia we are still hopeless.
We invented the game for God’s sake.
Your average State school here has poor cricket facilities and cricket in the inner cities, among working-class children is virtually non-existent in this country any more. It has been confined to the elite schools and to the suburbs. So that’s the first problem, English cricket draws on too small a pool of talent.
The second problem is at the top of the game where a system that has bred generations of incompetents, matched only by the degree of overconfidence, first with the MCC and now with the ECB, the England and Wales Cricket Board, who continue to believe that it’s enough just to attain big-time sponsorship deals with multinational corporations and simply ignore the development of the game at the base.
So together, these two things, the slim social base and the ineptitude at the top of the game, have bred a thoroughly mediocre national side that is unable to give the Australians a serious game. But as I said, they are improving.
Where do you think British sport is going wrong?
Do we have to high an expectation for our sports stars to achieve in the face of stiff competition from bigger and better funded countries?
Should we have increased funding to improve facilities or is it just a lack of serious talent?
The Wembley stadium situation is a complete joke and an absolute shambles and makes us a laughing stock when compared to the “Millenium Stadium”, “Stade de France” and Australian national stadium projects. What hope have we got of ever staging an Olympic games with our facilities?
We rely too much on the 1966 World Cup win and other former glories, when other countries are steaming ahead winning modern tournaments.
We always seem to have the potential to be world-beaters, but we end up under achieving.
In players like Owen, Beckham and Gerrard, plus great up and coming under 21 talents, we have the potential to rule world football for years to come. But will we??
England are always scrapping through World and Euro Championship qualifying stages, many times only just managing to beat part time no hopers (albeit in difficult conditions). When are we going to breeze through these and qualify in style?
What got me thinking about this topic was our rather pathetic medal haul in the current Winter Olympics.
Alex Coomber won a bronze medal in the “Skeleton Bob”, where you basically slide down the bobsleigh circuit on a metal tea-tray, and the women’s curling team is guaranteed at least a silver medal. Two pretty low key “sports” that we are now pathetically raving about because of our amazing success, when America, Italy, France etc are all winning loads of gold medals every day in more higher profile events.
I know that part of this is because we are not a winter country in the scale of many other colder climate countries, but a lot of it is still to do with talent and funding.
National Lottery funding and taxes are giving these under achievers the chance to enjoy themselves in the mountains costs totalling about £3million. And there’s the £2million the British Olympic Association has spent from the revenue gained from corporate sponsorship.
Two snowboarders received a grant of £142,000 in the last year from the lottery fund. They trained in the American Rocky Mountains, French Alps and Italian Dolomites. But what did they achieve to pay off this huge investment?? Absolutely nothing.
The same can be said for the £850,000 wasted over the last couple of years on our bobsleigh teams.
Look at the summer Olympics; we’ve had a few achievements in the last few years on the track and field, but what about the swimming?
Like Australia we are a nation surrounded by water (although they do have a great climate), in the last games I don’t think we won a single medal in swimming, and our team admitted they performed poorly.
We have indoor training facilities but wheres the talent?
Our recent Davis Cup tennis loss to Sweden shows how lacking in depth British tennis is.
Tim and Greg (the Canadian import) are world-class players, but in the tight competition of the Davis Cup, we had no other talent to help them out. The Swedes had three decent players to use enabling them to rest more, whereas Tim & Greg had to play every game.
Then there’s Wimbledon. We build our hopes up every year; Tim gets through a tough and epic encounter only to lose to a relative nobody.
In rugby union we are currently ranked number 1, and our Six Nations form is awesome and hopefully we can go on to win the next World Cup.
Why can’t we be better at basketball & ice hockey? Lack of funding and sponsorship plus the fact that most players in the U.K leagues are washed up yanks keeping out young British talent.
Those sports are huge in the U.S, and they even show college basketball and American Football on TV.
We are getting better at cricket, we had great success in Pakistan, but against Australia we are still hopeless.
We invented the game for God’s sake.
Your average State school here has poor cricket facilities and cricket in the inner cities, among working-class children is virtually non-existent in this country any more. It has been confined to the elite schools and to the suburbs. So that’s the first problem, English cricket draws on too small a pool of talent.
The second problem is at the top of the game where a system that has bred generations of incompetents, matched only by the degree of overconfidence, first with the MCC and now with the ECB, the England and Wales Cricket Board, who continue to believe that it’s enough just to attain big-time sponsorship deals with multinational corporations and simply ignore the development of the game at the base.
So together, these two things, the slim social base and the ineptitude at the top of the game, have bred a thoroughly mediocre national side that is unable to give the Australians a serious game. But as I said, they are improving.
Where do you think British sport is going wrong?
Do we have to high an expectation for our sports stars to achieve in the face of stiff competition from bigger and better funded countries?
Should we have increased funding to improve facilities or is it just a lack of serious talent?
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What’s Wrong With British Sport?
Nothing apart from lack of international talent in all sports.
Nothing apart from lack of international talent in all sports.
Why is it we don't mind when we don't win anything at a major championship, but when we do when really we didn't expect anything from them, people start moaning about the fact that we aren't very good at everything.
Why don't we celebrate everything that we succeed in, even if it is partial. We should be proud of what we have done considering we are just a small country.
How can GB, with a population of 60million expect to compete with america and russia, when they have huge populations.
The Americans may act obnoxious when the word America is mentioned, or they win anything, but whats wrong with being patriotic? The Americans take patriotism to the extreme, much to the annoyance of the sane world, but when we do well, we should acknowledge it, not criticise what others haven't done.
Why don't we celebrate everything that we succeed in, even if it is partial. We should be proud of what we have done considering we are just a small country.
How can GB, with a population of 60million expect to compete with america and russia, when they have huge populations.
The Americans may act obnoxious when the word America is mentioned, or they win anything, but whats wrong with being patriotic? The Americans take patriotism to the extreme, much to the annoyance of the sane world, but when we do well, we should acknowledge it, not criticise what others haven't done.
The Premiership is the best league in the world, and has all the best teams.
§pånkër wrote:
> What about our rucby team? They are ranked at no.1 in the world at the moment.
Yes and i stated that in the post. I wonder if they can maintain good form to the world cup???Hope so, because we need to win a major team sport title.
> What about our rucby team? They are ranked at no.1 in the world at the moment.
Yes and i stated that in the post. I wonder if they can maintain good form to the world cup???Hope so, because we need to win a major team sport title.
What about our rucby team? They are ranked at no.1 in the world at the moment.
James Pond wrote:
> we won gold at women's curling
Yes, our first winter gold since 1984...pretty bad really that it take that long to win another gold.
But it was a very good final...i might even go as far as to say exciting!
> we won gold at women's curling
Yes, our first winter gold since 1984...pretty bad really that it take that long to win another gold.
But it was a very good final...i might even go as far as to say exciting!
we won gold at women's curling
yay, bowls on ice. With sweeping!
Oh well, at least they get some training for their future careers, when the lottery cash dries up : )
Oh well, at least they get some training for their future careers, when the lottery cash dries up : )
Can't talk now.....must watch live coverage of Britains new favourite sport and our only hope for Olympic gold....Curling..ZZZzzz...
The Premiership just goes to show how big Brittish Sport is, in one area (football), even if it is full of foreigners, it's considered as the best league in the world!! But that's only in football, nothing else.
The Wembley project is a joke, and I really hate the FA for that! Aswell as appointing Eriksson, AND having a young Scotsman with no experience (Adam Crozier) in charge! They also don't handle players well enough after red cards and stuff!
And more money to help it is something we don't need! If footballer's care so much about the English game they should pay to do somehting, instead of buying 5 new Jaguars! They earn enough, maybe too much!! Maybe that's why the FA messed up with Wembley??
The Wembley project is a joke, and I really hate the FA for that! Aswell as appointing Eriksson, AND having a young Scotsman with no experience (Adam Crozier) in charge! They also don't handle players well enough after red cards and stuff!
And more money to help it is something we don't need! If footballer's care so much about the English game they should pay to do somehting, instead of buying 5 new Jaguars! They earn enough, maybe too much!! Maybe that's why the FA messed up with Wembley??
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