Sport being entertaining and fun?

[Taffy Blue in Berkshire]

As a C4rdf boy I naturally follow City and most things Welsh.

I was at the CCS on Saturday (enough said). It was grim and frustrating.

Over the summer I've watched Glammy a few times. Today was another debacle.

I also have watched the egg on a few occasions. Have no great expectations for the World Cup and not even sure when Wales are playing.

Today I had the England semi-final on in the background which was most enjoyable to watch and a good buzz.

Years of watching City have set the bar pretty low and fortunately as an old f4rt I can remember the good days in the past at NP from the early 70's and also watching the egg in the Halcyon days and seeing Glammy win the Championship on two occasions.

I was reflecting this afternoon how the magic seems to have gone out of sport. The ground's are sterile, no atmosphere, the team changes like traffic lights.

Not sure what the answer is but in my senior years I like to be entertained and enjoy the experience.

Listening to the VFTN podcast I think many of us feel the same way.

Tipping point, the chase and a snooze are not the answer.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz TIB.

[The Lone Gunman]

If you think City in the Seventies was the good old days, you’re clearly looking at things through very rose-tinted spectacles.

[life on mars]

Sport was a treat in the old days, sadly there's so much available it lost its fascination, I remember being excited by late night athletics with Coe and Ovett.

The other problem sport is now riddled with corruption, money , stimulants, rules , its almost robotic and false .

[Dave Blue]

I was bemoaning my bad luck at supporting City and Glam but to make out the ‘good old days’ was any better is a bit much. We waited 60 odd years for a top tier return and 30 years for a Glam cricket title.

[the other bob wilson]

The last three seasons have taught me that, if I never needed to be entertained while watching City in the past, I do now. These days, I enjoy watching us play away sometimes even if it is seldom entertaining, but, at home, forget it. I still usually wake up on the morning of home matches with a feeling of anticipation (although the fact that there were times last season when it took me a couple of hours to remember we were playing that day tells a story) and that this is going to be the day we either win while entertaining or give someone a pasting. However, it doesn’t take long at all for any positivity to dispel - as mentioned in another thread, I knew what was going to happen on Saturday after about ten minutes because, despite all of the optimism whipped up by the Chairman and his friends in the local media, it was the same old crap being served up.

Time was that I never thought I’d ever see City play in the top two divisions in my life again, so it’s true to say me expectations have changed with them in the last twenty years, but, essentially, I’ve always felt the same about Glamorgan - we’re nearly always going to be among the small fry in the county game and so I seldom get angry watching them like I do these days with City. Although it’s getting harder to do in the modern game, Glamorgan occasionally upset the odds and win things, but they don’t have to be doing that for me still to enjoy watching them. My two sources of frustration with them are, first,that around fifteen years ago the team were put on the back burner as we were told that ground redevelopment would eventually transform the club. To no great surprise, it has not done so - south Wales has proved that unless it’s England v Australia, there is no great appetite to attend a test match in the area and so the upheaval caused by the rebuild of the stadium has gained us one, sometimes, two limited over internationals per season, while Glamorgan bumble along as they’ve always done - the team is no better now than it was before. Second, the Welsh influence within the team seems lessened these days and I find it very disappointing that in the last couple of years we’ve lost Welshmen Roman Walker and David Lloyd to a couple of counties who I regard as the minnows of the modern game.

Thinking about it, I’d say the need to be entertained has always been there, albeit to a smaller degree when I was younger. That’s why I used to spend more time watching Cardiff RFC than City during the Durban years especially. In the mid eighties, there was no more entertaining club side in the UK than Cardiff when they got things right (which they did pretty often), but now I don’t even know when the Blues are playing and Wales game seldom keep my attention - rugby barely ever entertains me these days, but, despite the local difficulties, the love of football and cricket is as strong as ever.

[splott parker]

The City is the centre of my social life, more or less, these days. A day out with mates whether home or away. But I’ve learnt over time that relying on the City to be the ‘star’ turn of it is futile, the football is 90 odd minutes in the middle of a good day out.