The Tour de France winner does get all the glory and can probably name his own salary for the future but all prize monies are shared between the team. To the casual observer the 'stars' like Chris Froome dominate the race but only a good, organise supporting team will make it possible. Team members will give their all to protect the leader. I love watching it :thumb2:
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I can’t stand the cheating and diving either Dave, but I get irate when people put up rugby players as models of bravery and chivalry and continually compare them positively to footballers. They are not these paragons of virtue…..they are paid professional players, and like any other sportsmen of that ilk they will bend or break the rules to gain advantage if they think they can get away with it. As to taking “pain” better, well, no sense no feeling I suppose!
I also have an issue with international rugby national eligibility, I think if your dads mates grans next door neighbour was a bottle washer for Brains brewery in Cardiff you could get a game for wales, and the majority of the All Black team actually come from the islands, not New Zealand!Comment
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Jakko - it's nice to know I'm not the only one who occasionally watches a bit of cycling just to look at the scenery!
NickComment
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No body mentioned the electric bicycles or doping in the tour de France so just to put the balance back......
JohnComment
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Hi John
I did mention the doping problems that has plagued professional cycling. I think that the widespread doping of the Armstrong years are hopefully over now. In all sport there will always be "cheats" but I believe that they are a tiny minority.
JimComment
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Cycling has a bad reputation for doping, but that really dates back about 20 years already. Back then, it was rife, but because of the very great clampdown on it since then, there is probably not any more of it going on than in any other sport. As for electric bikes, look up Femke Van den Driessche.Comment
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Haven't watched Football since Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem! :angry: and you couldn't pay me to watch CCP loving National Basket Ball League. I'm Done, Rick H.Comment
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That was Lance Armstrong having a rest Tony :tongue-out3:Comment
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I suspect you're right there Tim. The influx of money has spoiled a lot of sports. Seems that winning at all costs is bringing cheating to a new art form and any kind of gamesmanship is considered fair.
Mind you, that's nothing new. Many (many) years ago I played Pool at my local pub and we got a team together to play in the local league. Everyone paid a weekly subscription to register and be allowed to play in the league. Because of the number of teams, the league was divided into two divisions. Selection into the divisions was done at random in the first year, with promotion and relegation of the top and bottom three teams at the end of the season.
The league was run by a group of guys who played for the pub that initially set up the league and they were naturally in the first division, while my pub was in the second.
At the end of the season, various cash prizes were shared out amongst the teams depending on their final places in the league table. The first division obviously got the lion's share of the prizes which was sort of reasonable. Unfortunately, the lions share was so big that prize payouts in the second division suffered badly. My team came 3rd of about 15 teams and we didn't win enough to cover the subscriptions we'd paid so we ended up out of pocket, and I think only the winning team in the second division actually made a profit. I know that the majority of teams will always lose out, but our thoughts were that doing well enough to earn promotion should have been good enough to at least get our money back.
Despite many complaints, the original organisers - who won the first division and decided the prize monies - were so greedy and adamant that their division of the prize money was fair that over half the teams refused to join again so the league folded.Comment
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And you thought football was tricky! Anyone seen the rules for cricket?I don’t particularly care for football, or pretty much any sport (though I kind of like cycling, partly because the countryside and spectators are often interesting to see :smiling3
but guys … you do realise that you’re griping about the kind of things pretty much everyone would do when in the same position, right?
The main one seems to be high salary top footballers get, for supposedly doing very little. Blame the salary on the clubs and the media: if they weren’t asking, respectively willing to pay, so much for broadcast rights, the players wouldn’t be getting that much money either. Or to turn this around: the players simply want a share of all the cash they see the clubs make, because the club wouldn’t be making it without the players. This is no different from factory workers demanding higher wages when the company is doing well.
The players’ haircuts and other flamboyancy is simply a result of having a lot of money and being of the current extravert generation. Pretty much everyone ever in history who had a lot of money, went about showing it off to others. High-level footballers, being the kind of people who are used to (and enjoy) being in the spotlight, just tend to do this in more obvious ways than, say, a nerdy IT billionaire or a fantasy writer who might spend it on sportscars, an aircraft museum, a gigantic yacht, or, oh, I don’t know, a football club.
Oh yeah, and all the “football is dull” memes are (almost certainly) American, who (not to put too fine a point on it) don’t understand the sport. The first part of this video explains the reasons pretty well:
Cricket Rules - O.K!
You have two sides – one out in the field and one in.
The side that is out in the field tries to get each man in the side coming in out.
Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out to play, and stays in until he’s out. When he is out he comes in and the next man goes out and stays in until he is out.
When they are all out, the men on the side that’s been out come out and try to stay in, while the side that's been in comes out and tries to get those coming in out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
Sometimes you get men who are still in that have to come in even though they are not out.
When both sides have been in and out – including the not outs –
The game is over!Comment
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Football rules are quite simple, as are Cricket in the main, but Rugby? Out on the full is allowed sometimes, but not always….and why is it called “out on the full”….. and sometimes you can call for the mark, and others the game carries on…..offside is virtually unintelligible to the non cognoscenti and most rules are open to change at regular intervals….
By the way, I’m not anti rugby, but might be giving that impression ….I love to watch a good game as much as the next man. My school was very much rugby oriented, my year producing an England captain (Richard Hill) and several England Schoolboy players. My brother in law had a trial for England Schoolboys as a winger, but ran up against the vested interest that is the public school system. The trial match was held at Marlborough college, and was set up as their team against the rest of the trialists….of course the the public schoolboys came across as better positionally and slicker passers. Living and playing together every day while the other trialists hadn’t met before helped that impression LOL..Comment
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Cricket is essentially simple: one side tries to knock over the little stick on the three longer sticks, the other side tries to prevent that.
The confusing thing about cricket is the scores. I have read about how they work several times and still never grasped how it’s decided who’s won.Comment
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