Whenever you strike up a conversation in Britain maybe at the barber's, in the street or on a train journey, you inevitably get around to two subjects -- the weather and sport, which are as much part of English life as roast beef and the Houses of Parliament.
English people are fond of all kinds of sports. England is a sports-loving nation. Sports in England take many forms: organized competitive sports, which attract huge crowds to encourage their favourite team to victory, athletic games played for recreation and others.
The British are proud that many sports originated in their country and then spread throughout the world. The national British sports are: football, golf, cricket, table tennis, lawn tennis, snooker, steeplechase, racing, and darts.
The game peculiarly associated with England is cricket. Cricket is an English game. Not many Scots, Irish or Welsh play it. Many other games that are English in origin have been accepted with enthusiasm in other countries; cricket has been seriously and extensively accepted only in the Commonwealth, particularly in Australia, India, and Pakistan.
Cricket is played in schools, colleges, universities. Test matches with other countries are held regularly. Cricket is slow, and a spectator, sitting in the afternoon sun after his lunch, may be excused for having a little sleep for half an hour. Cricket is making no progress in popularity. Most popular is football.
Football, the most popular game in the world, is of two kinds in Britain: association football (soccer) and rugby. Soccer played almost in all countries remains one of the most popular games in Great Britain. It is the national sport and British club teams are often successful in Europe.
The football season in Britain lasts from late summer (end of August) to late spring (early May). Football, or soccer, as it is sometimes called to distinguish it from rugby football, is the most popular sport. Most young lads begin by kicking a tennis ball or tin-can up and down the street, and some of them end by playing for their town club. Football clubs in England are based on towns like Manchester, Birmingham, Portsmouth, and all have nicknames -- Norwich are the Canaries, because of their yellow shirts, Portsmouth -- the Sailors, because the town is a port, Wolverhampton -- the Wolves, and so on. The big event of the week usually begins at 3 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, when most matches are played. Many footballers in England are fulltime, professionals -- they are paid by their club and work only in football. Nearly 40 million spectators each year attend matches between the great professional teams organized by the Football League. The biggest event in England is the Cup Final played at the Empire Stadium, Wembley, in a London suburb. But British football today has a bad name at home and abroad because of the violence of some groups of supporters.
The next popular sport after football is rugby, which is largely an amateur game. Rugby football (or rugger) has existed in Britain since the beginning of the 19th century, when a teacher at Rugby school, while playing football, decided that it would be better to pick up the ball and run with it. Rugby is especially popular in Wales and the north of England. It is played with an oval shaped ball on a field by teams of 15 men.
Swimming is also very popular and there are many public swimming baths. Rowing and canoeing are practised less because there are not so many facilities. The annual Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge universities on the river Thames is, however, one of the most popular sporting events of the year. It first started in 1820 and has been held almost every spring since 1836. A lot of people come to watch it. Other popular water sports are water skiing and surfing.
Winter sports such as ice-hockey, skiing and ice-skating are generally impossible in Britain (except in Scotland) because of the climate, they have no great following because of the lack of ice and snow, but many people spend winter holidays on the Continent in order to take part in them.
Englishmen like all kinds of racing. Horse-racing, motor-car racing, boat-racing, dog-racing, donkey-racing are very popular in England. The interest in such sports as horse-racing and dog-racing can be explained by the Englishman's fondness for gambling. Anyway, most Englishmen have some interest in at least one kind of sport.