OT grazie ameican football & yours

winrockpost wrote on 7/2/2006, 2:49 PM

I watched and enjoyed the football between England and Portugal. Funny thing is ,as in american football ,after all the tremendous effort, stratedgy, planning, plays it ends up coming down to a lone kicker , and a goal post or a goalie ,,,,,,guess our sports are fairly similar after all

Comments

Grazie wrote on 7/2/2006, 10:13 PM

Hi! - Well, your Am-Football has more than a "passing" similarity to our Rugby - rather than our Association Football. Rugby is a hand-on ball game not a "football" game and is MEANT to be a contact sport, our Football isn't - it is Foot:Ball.

G

corug7 wrote on 7/2/2006, 11:53 PM

Let's not forget that Rugby Football (supposedly) originated when William Webb Ellis picked up a (soccer) football at Rugby school and his opponents attempted to tackle him, or that Gridiron (American) football is a direct decendant of both sports.

Grazie wrote on 7/3/2006, 12:34 AM

. .and here is more . .. posted this sometime back ..

1 - In the beginning there was a a game called football - Nearly 1000 years old . . . something about the Romans here too!!

2 - Rugby started in mid 19th Century when a Guyser called Web-Ellis picked up the "football" and ran with it . .HAHA . .silly boy . ..

3 - Went over to the STATES as Rugby. Wasn't picked-up . . Renamed as "Football"

4 - Meanwhile back in the UK The Football (RoundBALL!) Association was formed to regularise many things . . least of which was the concept that the "feature" of handling the ball could only be done with the "foot" . .unless you were the goalie OR you were "throwing" from the sidelines

5 - Taken some of the letters from Association this "game" became to be affectionately named as SOCcer . .was picked-up and then "owned" by our working class as THIER own game, as opposed to the game of Rugby, which had become the ownership of the "public" schools .. yer wanna know about Public Skools? Well that's another story .. surfice it to say that Rugby became the game of "choice" of the well-off and not a game that yer actaual working class bloke would play .. . .but .. this has all changed .. .

http://www.wordorigins.org/wordors.htm#soccer

Soccer
Soccer is an abbreviation for Association Football. The Football Association was formed in London in October 1863 when representatives of eleven clubs and schools met in an attempt to standardize the rules of the game. One of the rules prohibited the carrying of the ball, a rule that would lead to the Rugby-oriented clubs leaving the Association several months later. The name Association Football was coined to distinguish it from Rugby.

By 1889, the abbreviation socca' was in use, and the spelling soccer had made its appearance by 1895.

http://www.bartleby.com/65/so/soccer.html

http://www.bartleby.com/65/ru/rugby.html

PeterWright wrote on 7/3/2006, 1:43 AM

Grazie - reminds me of the old quote:

Rugby - a thugs' game played by gentlemen

Soccer - a gentlemen's game played by thugs.

RichMacDonald wrote on 7/3/2006, 2:30 PM

I played rugby from when I could walk until I was 14. I played one game of rugby in the US and quit forever. A huge guy who had obviously flunked out of "football" put his head down and speared me head-first. I saw him coming from 10 yds away and was so stunned I froze and let him run me over. I got up, told him he was going to be a quad if he kept that up but I wasn't going to join him, walked off the field, and never touched the ball again.

Of course, I never said I wouldn't continue to drink with them :-)

Dan Sherman wrote on 7/4/2006, 3:09 PM

IMHO
Hockey (ice hockey) provides more excitement in 2 minutes than soccer (football) does in 90 minutes.
That's a fact much of the world has yet to discover.
You buy a ticket for a seat, but you only need the edge!
I dozed watching Germany and Italy.
That never would happen watching a hockey match.

Grazie wrote on 7/4/2006, 4:17 PM

"I dozed watching Germany and Italy."

Yup! I can see you doing that Sherman. Yup, I can see that.

Grazie

MH_Stevens wrote on 7/4/2006, 7:37 PM

I just back from UK where I won the local betting by predicting England would loose on penalties. Despite the wager the loss didn't bother me at all - it was worth it just to see Beckham cry.

Michael

Dan Sherman wrote on 7/5/2006, 6:36 AM

It was a joke Grazie!
Yup.

TorS wrote on 7/5/2006, 9:56 AM

I'm not a Beckham fan, but I'd say this: If you watch England play (and manage to not doze off) you should at least notice that Beckham is always where he is supposed to be, always playable, and more often than not he sends the ball on with great tactical skill and almost surgical precision. What he starts is not always taken properly care of, but that's another story.
Tor
Btw - I was watching Wimbledon for half an hour today. The Beeb really has polished up its "covering act". What great graphics to show us the nearly out balls, and what amazing slow-motion close-ups. And yet, done in such a way that the game itself is always playing lead, never gets downstaged by the media and its technology. Great work!