Well, only on the pitch!Randy Cornhole wrote:I have been to hundred's rugby matches, home and international and I have NEVER seen a fight!!
turok mentioned both sports in his original posting, so I suppose it's fair enough to continue to do so, but it would be a shame to turn this into a rugby v. soccer debate. They are two completely different sports. Besides, most rugby fans enjoy following football as well. I know bubbly was engaging in a mild wind-up, but rugby fans tend to want to defend the game against ignorant comments like that, rather than slag off football. My advice to bubbly would be to watch some of the World Cup games with an open mind, in the company of rugby fans (no clever comments, mind, you don't want your underpants set alight).
One of the things that really annoys me about Association Football is that cheating has become an intrinsic and accepted part of the game. How often have you heard a commentator say, after a dodgy foul has been given, and while the player is rolling on the ground in agony, "Well, there was contact." And how often have you seen a player "go down" unnecessarily in order to win a free kick, when he might have scored if he'd just kept going.
I've noticed the merest hint of this sort of thing creeping into rugby since the game turned professional - not feigning injury (hardly necessary in rugby), but exaggerating a block off the ball for example. But rugby has become a much more entertaining sport in the last 25 years or so. You don't get many 3-3 draws nowadays. The players at the top level are phenomenal athletes, and we are a long way from the days when forwards were big, slow, shoving machines who usually dropped the ball if it was passed to them. Look at the speed and coordination of the 6'8" 2nd row forwards these days.
As a regular watcher of both sports, I'll far more often get bored watching soccer. I switched off the Challenge Shield at half-time.
On a different question it's debatable whether or not England were the best team in the last World Cup. They were certainly one of the best two or three teams in the world. What's not debatable is that they were (and still are) World Champions. How often does the best team win a cup competition? And how boring would it be if they did? Were Greece the best soccer team in Europe? Don't think so...
And along with Jaime, I'm still curious about these 1 dayers at Twickenham... obviously bubbly knows nothing about cricket either!
