Курсовая работа: Sports in Britain
Towards the end of the 15th century, Henry VII tried to ban the playing of football in England. Whether it was because he wanted to encourage the country’s young men to practice their archery, or simply reduce the mayhem and conspicuous alcoholic consumption that went alongside these great brawling encounters, is still a matter for historical debate. But nothing could stop the people of Britain from playing their game.
By the mid‑19th century, football began to take the more civilized shape we know today. In 1846 the private schools universally adopted the ‘Cambridge rules’ and in 1863 the Football Association was formed. By the end of the 19th century football was big business in Britain, with a professional league of two divisions in England and Wales, a separate league in Scotland, cup competitions in all three countries, and an audience of millions.
In 1910, West Auckland, an amateur team of miners from Durham in the north-east of England, played in the first ever ‘World Cup’, a cobbled-together competition that pre-dated the official World Cup by 20 years. They won it, beating the professionals of Italy’s Juventus in the final. But the British were slow to follow up that success, not entering the World Cup until 1950 and equally slow to join in the European competitions.
Britain’s ‘splendid isolation’ meant it was left behind the world game when it did enter the major competitions, but it soon caught up. In 1966 England hosted the World Cup finals and won, beating West Germany 4–2 in extra time. The following year the Scottish club Glasgow Celtic won the European Cup and their success was repeated in 1968 by Manchester United which included Bobby Charlton and George Best.
English clubs dominated European football during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Liverpool won the European Cup four times between 1977 and 1984 and in the intervening years Nottingham Forest won it twice and Aston Villa once. But the nation then had to wait until Manchester United’s injury-time triumph over Bayern Munich in 2004 for the trophy to return to England.
British football has a reputation for being the most entertaining in the world. It's a mix of pace and passion combined with the skill and technique which has been enhanced since a major cash injection from television companies has enabled clubs to attract many of the world's greatest players to the UK. During the 2004/2005 season, the London club Chelsea fielded a team that included players from Italy, France, Spain, Norway, Romania, Nigeria, Brazil and Uruguay – and even the club manager was Italian.
The introduction of so many foreign players to British football has done nothing to reduce the intensity of local rivalries. The ‘Old Firm’ games in Scotland between the great clubs of Glasgow, Celtic and Rangers, are perhaps the most fiercely contested occasions, though they are run close by the local derbies between Liverpool and Everton, Manchester United and Manchester City, and north London clubs Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
In the season 2007/2008 Manchester United have won the Premiership title in England.
Rugby
Rugby got its name from the English public school Rugby, where, over a century ago, a boy picked up a soccer ball and ran with it. To us it seems like a combination of handball and football. It is also quite a violent sport, and it is not uncommon for players to lose teeth in the course a season.
Rugby is the national sport of Wales, and international championships are arranged between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and France.
Rugby – a form of football, which is played with an oval ball and can be carried or kicked. It is played in two teams, each consisting of 13 or 15 players, depending on whether they are playing «Rugby League» or «Rugby Union». The aim of the game is to try to put the ball over the other team's line.
Rugby and football became two separate sports when the Football Association said only the goalkeeper was allowed to hold the ball.
Legend says the game was born in 1823 during a football match at Rugby School. Instead of kicking the ball, an enterprising 16‑year-old named William Webb Ellis, picked it up and ran with it, diving over the other team’s line to claim a goal. A plaque at Rugby School commemorates Ellis’s achievement.
There were no widely recognized ‘rules’ for football during the 1820s, but by the 1840s the game was evolving in two separate directions; one where the ball was controlled predominantly by the feet, and the other, pioneered at Rugby School, where it was kept in the hand. The game’s first rules were published at Rugby in 1846; one of which stated that it was ‘unfair to hack and hold at the same time’, which gives some idea of how uncompromising a sport it was.
The Rugby Football Union (RFU) was established in 1871 to form a universal set of laws that also removed some of the more violent aspects of the Rugby School game. The 21 clubs that attended the first meeting included Harlequins, Blackheath and Richmond, still among Britain’s top rugby-playing clubs today. One famous name that was missing, though, was the London club Wasps. Somehow they managed to send their representative to the wrong venue at the wrong time on the wrong day.
Rugby’s first international was also played that year, in March at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh, between Scotland and England. The Scots won, but England got their revenge in the return fixture the following year at the Oval.
The rules have changed a great deal since 1871 and spawned other games, notably American Football and Australian Rules Football. In 1895 rugby itself split into two codes when 20 clubs from northern England formed Rugby League, a professional version of the Rugby Union game. Rugby Union would remain an amateur sport for another hundred years.
The heartland of Rugby League is still in northern England, in Hull and Halifax, Wigan and Warrington, Leeds and Bradford. The most passionate devotees of Rugby Union are to be found in the valleys of south Wales, the Scottish borders, and the English midlands and west country. It’s a popular sport in Ireland, too. Indeed, it’s the only sport where the Irish are represented by one, united team.
Cricket
Cricket is a ball game played by two teams of eleven players. It is played on a pitch with a wicket (a kind of goal) at each end. Each team bats (takes its innings) in turn. The object of the batting side is to make runs, while the bowling and the fielding side tries to dismiss the batsmen. The winning team is the one that scores most runs.
The spectators must be a patient lot. So-called test matches last for three or five days.
Cricket is a summer game in England and Wales. However, it has become very popular throughout the Commonwealth in places like Australia, the West Indies, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and New Zealand.
Cricket – a very famous and absolutely English game! The first form of cricket was played 250 years ago.
The rules are very complicated, but it is a game, which is played on a field with 11 players in each team. The aim of the game is to score as many «runs» (which are points) by hitting a hard leather-covered ball with a wooden bat and running between two sets of upright wooden sticks, which are called «stumps». At the same time the other team tries to throw the players out by bowling them out, catching them out or running them out.
A game of cricket can last all afternoon if it is played on the village green. However, at international level it can last 5 days.
Cricket began in south-east England with shepherds bowling balls of wool at gates called bails. Records show Edward II wielding a bat, and even Cromwell was partial to a game.
One of the earliest clubs was formed at Hambledon, Hampshire, in the 1760s, but modern cricket really began to develop in London with the formation of the Marylebone Cricket Club, or MCC, in 1787. The following year, members of the club drew up a set of rules, which have survived, largely unchanged to the present day.
The MCC asked Thomas Lord to find them a ground, and the club finally settled on the site of a former duck pond. Lord’s, as the ground came to be known, is still the home ground for the MCC, and is widely acknowledged as the home of cricket.
County cricket developed as the game caught on outside London, with one of the first county matches being played between Middlesex and Essex in 1787. Eight counties were finally organized into a championship in 1890, with 18 now playing for today’s County Championship, the oldest domestic competition in English cricket, at some of the most picturesque venues in the world.
International cricket had been developing as the game followed the progress of the British Empire around the globe.