I dont know why youre biting. Is the same tw@t who starts these threads under different guises.
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I think it comes from the fact that, and I'm big enough to admit it, football fans have a chip on their shoulder. We've been told we're hooligans, thugs, banned from playing in schools, and treated like aliens when we say we prefer football to rugby. After years of the establishment ramming rugby down our throat, it was nice that football was top dog last summer.
Frankly, rugby in Wales in an absolute mess. The regions haven't worked, they never get big crowds and a lot of fans don't know the players or who's next in line for Wales. For many, a Wales home game is an excuse to get pissed. Wales were on the 5m line in 2006, right in front of me, playing Australia, and the lads in front of me went to get a pint. The game ended as a draw, and when we scored I looked up to see there were hundreds of people going up and down with their beers.
Anyway, the game of rugby is great, I really enjoy it. Wales are a competitive nation (should be better) and there needs to be a drastic shake up of the game at home. The club sides will probably die out unless they get significant levels of support from the WRU as they can't compete with the crowds and spending of Ireland, England and France.
Oh that's a very valid point Nick. I think many of the negative comments about rugby supporters (at internationals anyway) is borne out of genuine frustration that their bad behaviour generally gets overlooked by the media, but if a city fan so much as looks at someone the wrong way it guarantees a headline.
Genuinely I have seen behaviour at rugby internationals that just wouldn't be tolerated anywhere near a football ground.
I freely admit that I hate the cowboy hats, the leeks, the daffodil hats, the barbour wearing drunks with their hipflasks breathing stale whisky over everyone, the ticket touts, the del boys selling their tat on queen street. I hate the fact that the team that finishes a game is unrecognisible from the team that started the game, the rule changes, the style of play these days, the corporate hospitality and the whole "look at me" event that it's become. THAT'S what I dislike about today's rugby. The rugby I used to like, was the rugby for working men, played by working men for whom a Saturday afternoon was a break from the mines and the factories.
Kudos to you for supporting your local club, but that's a world away from the "event" that we see at the prinicpality.
We're straying off the point of the OP here though (I take my share of the blame for that) which is the, imho, idiotic decision to weaken the national team by denying the best players a cap if they dare to ply their trade in Bath for example.
Rugby, as with football and a myriad of other overhyped meaningless nonsense which so many people mistakenly believe is important, is another weapon of mass distraction. In Wales following the national team's fortunes is seen as patriotic amongst the most dumbed-down - the great majority of whom would sooner attempt to p!ss in their own mouth than learn their own language. That's the top and bottom of it; brutally frank but nevertheless accurate.
Learning the welsh language is as meaningless as watching sport in the long run.
It'll eventually die as will every language.
People like sport so they watch it. In the brief time we are alive it is human nature to do what you enjoy.
I wish I knew welsh but I can't see me going out of my way to learn it now.