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Sport in Britain

Contents
Introduction
Association Football – Soccer
Football Pools
Cricket
Wimbledon- an Unusual club
Table Tennis
Racing
The Highland Games
Golf
1. Introduction
Many kinds of sport originated from Britain. The English have a proverb –All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. They do not think that play is more important than work. They think that Jack will do his work better if he plays as well, so he is encouraged to do both.
Sport is very popular in Britain. There are several places in Britain associated with a particular kind of sport. One of them is Wimbledon, the other one is Wembley, and the third one is Derby.

2. Association football – Soccer
Football has been called the most popular game in the world and it has a great many fans in Britain. Association football or soccer is the game that is played in nearly all countries. A team is composed of a goalkeeper, two backs, three half-backs and five forwards. There is another game called rugby football, so called because it originated at Rugby, a well-known English public school. In this game the players may carry the ball. There is also an American kind of football, different from the other two. The captain of the team is usually the oldest or best player.
Association football or soccer remains one of the most popular games played in the British Isles. Every Saturday from late August until the beginning of May, large crowds of people support their sides in football grounds up and down the country, while an almost equally large number of people play the game in clubs teams of every imaginable variety and level of skill.
The final of the football competition takes place every May at the famous Wembley stadium in London. Some of the best known clubs in England are Manchester United, Liverpool and the Arsenal. In Scotland Rangers, Celtic or Aberdeen usually win the cup or the championship.

3. Football Pools

The English have never been against a gamble though most of them know where to draw the line and wisely refrain from betting too often. Since the war the most popular form of gambling is no doubt that of staking a small sum on the football pools. Those who do so receive every week from one of the pools firms a printed form, in this are listed the week’s matches. Against each match or against a number of them, the optimist puts down a 1, a 2 or an x to show that he thinks the result of the match will be a home win, an away win or a draw. The form is then posted to the pools firm, with a postal order or cheque for the sum staked. At the end of the week the results of the matches are announced on TV and published in the newspapers and the investor can take out his copy of his coupon and check his forecast.

4. Cricket
English people love cricket. Summer is not summer without it. Even if you do not understand the rules, it is attractive to watch the players, dressed in white playing on the beautiful green cricket fields. Every Sunday morning from May to the end of September many Englishmen get up very early, and take a lot of sandwiches with them. It is necessary because the games are very long. Games between two village teams last for only one afternoon. Games between counties last for three days, with 6 hours play on each day. When England plays with one or other cricketing countries such as Australia and New Zealand it is called a test match and lasts for five days. Cricket is played in schools, colleges and universities and in most towns and villages by teams which play weekly games. Test matches with other cricketing countries are held annually.
Cricket is also played by women and girls. The governing body is Women’s Cricket Association, founded in 1926. Women’s cricket clubs have regular weekend games. Test matches and other international matches take place. The women’s World Cup is held every four years.
Cricket is played by two teams of 11 each. One team must bat and the other team must field. When the first team finished batting, the second team must begin.
The batsman must all the time guard his wicket, three rather ridiculous pieces of wood which are pushed into the ground. The game is very slow.
In many ways this is the most English of all sports. It is the game for a hot June day with a slight breeze and the feeling that there is no hurry in the world.
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5. Wimbledon- an unusual club
People all over the world know Wimbledon as the centre of lawn tennis. But most people do not know that it was famous for another game before tennis was invented. Wimbledon is now a part of Greater London. In 1874 it was a country village, but it had a railway station and it was the home of the All-England Croquet Club. The club had been there since 1864. A lot of people played croquet in England at that time and enjoyed it, but the national championships did not attract many spectators. So the club had very little money, and the members were looking for ways of getting some. This new game of lawn tennis seems to have plenty of action, and people like watching it,- they thought. – Shall we allow people to play lawn tennis on some of our beautiful lawns?
In 1875 they changed the name of the club to the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, and that is the name that you will still find in the telephone book. Two years later, in 1877, Wimbledon held the first world lawn tennis championship. The winner was S.W.Gore, a Londoner. There were 22 players, and 200 spectators, each paid one shilling. Those who watched were dressed in the very latest fashion – the men in hard top hats and long coats, and the ladies in dresses that reached to the ground. The club gained 10 pounds. It was saved.
Wimbledon grew. There was some surprise and doubt, of course, when the Club allowed women to play in the first women’s singles championships in 1884. But the ladies played well – even in long skirts that hid their legs and feet.
13836651257300 The Wimbledon championships begin on the Monday nearest to June 22, at a time when England often has its finest weather. It is not only because of the tennis that people like to go there. When the weather is good, it is a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon. The grass is fresh and green, the players wear beautiful white clothes, and the spectators are dressed in the latest fashion, there may be members of the Royal Family among them, and there are cool drinks in the open-air cafes next to the tennis courts.
Millions of people watch the championships on television.
6. Table Tennis
Eighty years ago, Mr. E. Goode of Putney, South London, went to the chemists to buy some aspirin. In the shop, he almost forgot about his tablets as he stood looking at the pimpled rubber mat on the counter. It had given him a fantastic new idea.
He paid for his aspirin and the rubber mat. Then he rushed home, cut the rubber mat to the right shape and size and stuck it to his plain wooden table tennis bat. The thin layer of rubber helped him put a very fast spin on the ball. When he became the English champion, everyone started copying him, putting rubber layers on their bats, and soon Mr. Goode clever idea completely changed the style and speed of table tennis.
-35560404495 Table tennis was first invented in England in about 1880. At first the game had several strange names – Gossima, Whiff Whaff and Ping Pong. It was not until 1926 that the International Table Tennis Association was formed with international championships and rules. One of the rules was that the rubber linings of the bat - Mr. Goode invention – could not be more than two millimeters thick on each side.
Although the game was invented in England British players do not have much chance in international championships.
But that is thanks to an Englishman that tennis is the fast and skilful game it is today. It is the pimpled rubber lining that allows players to get a good spin on the ball. Mr. Goodes headache eighty years ago was a turning point in the history of the game.
7. Racing
20955991235 There are all kinds of racing in England – horse-racing, motor-car racing, boat-racing, dog-racing, and even races for donkeys. On sports days at school boys and girls run races, and even train for them. There is usually a mile race for older boys, and the one who wins it is certainly a good runner.

Usually those who run a race go as far as possible, but there are some races in which everybody has to go very carefully in order to avoid falling.
The most famous boat- race in England is between Oxford and Cambridge. It is rowed over a course on the River Thames, and thousand of people go to watch it. The eight rowers in each boat have great struggle, and at the end there is usually only a short distance between the winners and the losers.
The University boat-race started in 1820 and has been rowed on the Thames almost every spring since 1836. At the Henly Regatta in Oxford shire, founded in 1839, crews from all over the world compete each July in various kinds of race over a straight course of 1 mile 550 yards-about 2.1 km.

8. The Highland Games
Scottish Highland Games, at which sports-including tossing the caber, putting the weight and throwing the hammer- dancing and piping competition take place, attract large numbers of spectators from all over the world.
These meetings are held every year in different places in the Scottish Highlands. They include the clans led by their pipers, dressed in their kilts, tartan plaids, and plumed bonnets, who march round the arena.
The features common to Highland Games are bagpipe and Highland dancing competition and the performance of heavy athletic events-some of which, such as tossing the caber, are Highland in origin. All competitors wear Highland dress, as do most of the judges. The games take place in a large roped-off arena. Several events take place at the same time- pipers and dancers perform on a platform, athletes toss the caber, put the weight, throw the hammer and wrestle. There is also a competition for the best-dressed Highlander.
1860550495935 Highland dancing is performed to bagpipe music, by men and women, such as the Sword Dance and the Reel.
No one knows exactly when the men of the Highland first gathered to wrestle, toss cabers, throw hammers, put weights, dance and play music. The games reflected the tough life of the early Scots. Muscle power was their means of livelihood – handling timber, lifting rocks to build houses, hunting. Tossing the caber originated among woodmen who wanted to cast their logs into the deepest part of a river.
Tossing the caber is not a question of who can throw it fastest. For a perfect throw the caber must land in the 12 – o clock position after being thrown in a vertical semicircle. The caber is a very heavy and long log.
9. Golf
Britain is famous for many kinds of sport. One of them is golf. It is a very interesting and an unusual game.
2916555621030 Golf is Scotland’s chief contribution to British sport. It is worth noting here an interesting feature of sporting life in Britain, namely. Its frequently close connection with social class of the players or spectators except where a game may be said to be a national sport. This is the case with cricket in England which is played and watched by all classes. This is true of golf, which is everywhere in the British Isles a middle – class activity.

Using Literature
Britain in brief. V.V. Otchepkova, I.I. ShustilovaEnglish language. Topics for exams. N.V.KravchenkoEnglish-Russian dictionary. O.S. AkhmanovaCD English for students.
Vocabulary
Soccer – футбол
Rugby – регби
Wrestling – борьба
Goalkeeper – вратарь
A score – счет
Football pools – футбольный тотализатор
Gamble –азартная игра
Betting –заключение пари
Bat –бита, бить битой (в крикете)
Wicket –ворота в крикете
Lawn tennis –теннис
Single –партия (в теннисе, гольфе), в которой участвуют только два противника
The Highland Games – состязания шотландских горцев
Tossing the caber –метание шеста
Putting the weight –поднятие веса
Throwing the hammer –метание молота
Piping –игра на волынке
Bagpipe –волынка
The Sword Dance –танец с саблями
The Reel-рил (шотландский народный хороводный танец)