Rugby - what's the attraction?

[screenexile]

So basketball - what's the attraction? I can only discern one skill - hitting the target with a thrown ball. I don't really rate being able to throw the ball to a teammate or being able to poke it down into the net from above. Throwing it from distance into the net is a fine skill, but it's not much different to darts. Oh, and being tall - that seems to be the other skill of basketball. But then darts has being fat.

Dribbling. Catching (I think we have that one in Gaelic football too). Ducking. Weaving. Feinting. Blocking. Passing (I think we have that one in rugby too). Accurately shooting a ball into a horizontal target not much bigger than itself, sometimes from a considerable distance (last time I played it was quite different from playing darts).

Ducking is a skill?

We can come back to the others, but really?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18ASBsQfXnw

[Puckoon]

So basketball - what's the attraction? I can only discern one skill - hitting the target with a thrown ball. I don't really rate being able to throw the ball to a teammate or being able to poke it down into the net from above. Throwing it from distance into the net is a fine skill, but it's not much different to darts. Oh, and being tall - that seems to be the other skill of basketball. But then darts has being fat.

I haven't that much time for indoor sports anyway. Except boxing. Now there's a sport.

Maybe you're joking?

I think any activity which requires split second mental decisions coupled with accurate mechanical movements all while under the immediate physical presence of an opponent - and all the above done at pace - can be classified as a skill requiring sport.

[Hardy]

Well we were loosely talking about sports we like and don't like and why. I don't like basketball because it bores me. It's not really enough to come into a discussion and say that, so I thought about why it bores me. And I came to the conclusion that it's because the skills involved (bar one) don't impress me as regards their apparent difficulty of execution and the range of skills appears to me to be minimal compared to just about any other ball sport I can think of, bar Olympic handball and netball.

I see it as a question of degree of difficulty and, for me, I'm just never impressed by the skills required when I'm watching basketball, by comparison to nearly all other ball sports and I've found it much easier to play basic basketball (with the exception of the one difficult skill) than all the ball sports I've played or tried to play: football, soccer, golf, tennis, squash, polo, snooker, pool and handball.

I was joking about the polo.

[Eamonnca1]

Hardy, I don't mean this in a snarky way, but have you ever actually sat down and watched a full game of basketball?

[Hardy]

Life is too short, Eamonn.

Seriously, though, not as far as I can remember. It just wouldn't hold my attention for that long. And I've just thought of another thing that irritates me about it - too much scoring. A score is the norm rather than the exception as the outcome of an attack. Soccer is at the other extreme in this regard though that's not the reason I find that more and more unwatchable too.

[Eamonnca1]

I really think you should give it a chance. If you watched it for at least a few minutes I'm sure you'd see what's going on.

Frequent scoring can be a feature of Gaelic games too, particularly hurling.

Infrequent scoring is actually part of the attraction of soccer.  Each score is such a big deal that the rest of the game is pure suspense.

What I like about Gaelic games is they combine frequent scoring with the suspense of soccer because of the added value of the goal.

[ross4life]

On another note I've seen a number of our underage talent choose Rugby over GAA for example we lost number key players off the U21 team that played in this year All Ireland final &

Ehhhh??
I certainly hope not.

I meant to say could have played in this year U21 final for example Daniel Qualter would have made a big difference to our midfield.

Ah I see.
I don't think any of the other lost to rubby bucks were any great shakes at football anyway and wre not very likely to have been on the team this year.
I think DQ's best asset was his size which would become less relevant as he moved into the adult ranks without ability to go with it which in my opinion was limited enough too.

In my opinion they were around the same level Compton,Kilroy,C.Shine & all were regular starters on our underage teams, in 08 they all played important roles capturing our first Ted Webb cup for 20 years. Qualter in most games i seen him play dominated midfield he reminded me Shaq & offerred more than just height. I have no doubt they would have been part of this year U-21 team, for example we had to play Niall Daly a defender & half hit Cathal Shine in midfield.

[laoislad]

I also think Basketball is a poor game.
It's in my top 3 along with rugby and horse racing as sports that I have no interest in.

[trileacman]

I also think Basketball is a poor game.
It's in my top 3 along with rugby and horse racing as sports that I have no interest in.

Same, don't get the attraction. No time for horse-racing either. Watched a bit of handball at the world cup, seemed better than both.

[Sidney]

Why is rugby so annoying?

http://www.thefreekick.com/board/index.php?threads/why-is-rugby-so-annoying.18830/

We are a nation of begrudgers apparently. So Bono said once. In one of his cleverer insights, he traced this scepticism of success to soup-taking during the famine. Then he rambled off on a patronising parable about some yank and a big house and the American dream and Irish dreamers and I lost interest again. But if we are begrudging as a people then it might just be one of the few things we do well. And even stranger, we do it well without falling over ourselves to congratulate one another about the whole endeavour.

We are also a nation of bandwagoners. Bebo, head shops and Garth Brooks all captured the public imagination here and became the greatest thing ever for a few days/weeks/months. And then they mostly just disappeared from our lives and we reverted to our normal selves, eagerly awaiting the next fad to sweep us off our feet. But what if one of those short-lived, harmless-seeming indulgences endured? What would Ireland look like in an apparently permanently obsessive state? Locked in a national embrace with a sport few play but everyone claims to love, we're currently finding that out.

In the conflict between bandwagoner and begrudger I'm happy to be in the latter camp. There may not be anything necessarily evil, or even mildly harmful, about the infestation of rugby into the consciousness of the Irish public. But the scale of this love affair with rugby is nauseating to those who aren't particularly interested. You can't just ignore rugby, the same way you couldn't just ignore the Plague in the Middle Ages. It occupies the news pages, the sport pages and the social pages of our newspapers. Social networks are corrupted by the rambling ill-informed opinions of a general public who have only taken any sort of interest in this sport in the last decade. And the assumption that grates the most is that we're all ever so proud of how this small little nation is performing on the world stage. And we're not just proud of them, we're proud of ourselves for our fantastic support and our growth as a nation.

The unbridled euphoria that greeted Ireland's Six Nations win last weekend was far from unexpected. Some of it was merited. By kick-off time there had been three weeks of intense media coverage about the retirement of Ireland's greatest rugby player. And the stage was set for a grand finale. A win in Paris would be the perfect send-off. Except it wasn't quite a perfect send-off. It was a championship win in a tournament where the championship plays second fiddle to a Grand Slam. And that battle had long since been lost. This is an annual six team tournament, where only five teams have any sort of realistic chance of ever winning and only four teams have had any sort of realistic chance for the last decade. Ireland won. It's an achievement we should be recognising on a fairly regular basis by now.

Ireland have 2 "Grand Slams" in more than a century. Simple mathematics assumes you should win four matches in a row about once in every 16 years. The paucity of our return isn't shameful – it's simply a reflection of the standing rugby has held in Irish society for the vast majority of its existence. It didn't gain widespread popularity because it was too complex to be enjoyed casually, it was too elitist to be played universally and it was frankly too boring to draw in a curious crowd beyond the core support base.

But now, it's almost become our national game. Everyone has an opinion. From the sports fan at work who loves every game going to the crank calling Liveline to complain about the disrespectful noises made when someone was kicking for a goal, everybody has something to say about every game Ireland play. The Marian Finucane Show features some class of a rugby pundit virtually every week. And Marian herself isn't short of a viewpoint of course. Sure didn't she watch the game the same as everyone else? And didn't her heart skip a beat when "we went upstairs to the TMO" to confirm what was obvious in real-time?

The problem with these opinions is they are all the same. The game is won and lost at the breakdown. O'Connell has the heart of a lion. O'Driscoll is so brave. And what hands! Oh what glorious hands! And that's about it. The more adventurous armchair fan might venture to rehash a Gerry Thornley opinion on Conor Murray's pass or the "linespeed" of the French defence. But the overwhelming probability is they haven't played the game, nor have they seen a game played outside of a stadium so they don't really have anything to offer. They just regurgitate the same opinions each week, simply changing the name of our next opponents and seemingly believing in the nonsense they are spouting in unison. It's creepy.

Living in Dublin and not having much interest in rugby is what I imagine living in Mount Carmel, Texas and not being a fan of David Koresh must have felt like. You can politely nod at the brainwashed masses, exchange pleasantries about a game you didn't watch but know in detail because every middle-of-the-road, mainstream, bland DJ on the radio felt compelled to mention it at every turn. But the overriding feeling is a horrible sense that everyone has been taken in by a con. And they are blissfully unaware of how ridiculous they all sound extolling its virtues.

It would be more polite to stand idly by while the country pauses to cheer on their heroes but that stance is almost impossible for anyone with any emotions whatsoever. It would be more mature to simply ignore the delight others are taking in a victory. But maybe the whole country didn't grow up as a nation that fateful day when England or France came to Croke Park. Some of us have been left with real emotional reactions like bitterness and jealousy and self-righteousness and cynicism.

Without wanting to try and out-Bono the man himself, there's something particularly post-colonial about our infuriating need for acceptance from the world. It wouldn't be enough to go to France, win a match and return home with the trophy to a modest gathering at the airport. A gathering proportionate to the percentage of the population who actually play rugby maybe. That wouldn't do at all. This was rugby.

So we didn't just honour Brian O'Driscoll ourselves, thank him for the years of service and tell him how great he was. We wanted to know what the English thought of him. Were they honouring them the way they should? And as luck would have it wasn't Enda in the White House? Getting Obama to mention him by name? Perfectly appropriate, measured and sensible apparently. The idea of a speechwriter or political assistant with an imagination deficit suggesting to Obama that he mention Brian O'Driscoll in his St Patrick's Day aside is cringeworthy. Has a Taoiseach ever looked more demeaned and insignificant than the beaming Enda Kenny, giddy and gleeful that Obama was deigning to humour us with that shout-out? Can you even imagine Ronald Reagan mentioning some long forgotten obscure Irish rugby hero from our unforgettable Triple Crown in 1982? Would anyone have known who on earth he was talking about?

The unfortunate reality is that this frenzied attraction to rugby is not likely to diminish in the short-term. The emperor may be wearing no clothes but the public have decided that doesn't matter – they all love the no clothes look. It's a topic everyone can be an expert on without risking ridicule, because the narratives are so consistent everyone can keep up. Complexities are airbrushed out of the conversation. And now there's even reason to celebrate. Against all the odds Ireland have managed to produce a victorious international team to parade alongside our triumphant provinces who regularly trample all over their opponents in grossly imbalanced competitions. The resulting hysteria is frightening.

[Eamonnca1]

Don't be a hater.

[deiseach]

Wow. Just...wow. What a magnificently entertaining stream of (mostly) nonsense. Well done that man.

[Billys Boots]

Rugby is a triumph of marketing, or should I say morketing, over common sense.

[Nally Stand]

Fantastic article. Nail on the head.

[AZOffaly]

It's a horseshit article by someone who is, I assume from the website it's on, a soccer man and can't abide the fact that the Irish (all Irish by the way) rugby team has overtaken the Irish soccer team in the consciousness of the general public. He has a point about the media attention, and despite recent developments in the spread of rugby, D4 and media outlets based in the capital will be naturally swayed towards Rugby.

I want to see did he do a similar article about the various olé, olé bandwagons especially the last one in Poland. Did he give out about 'The Boys in Green' spreads all over the papers? Did he lambast people who haven't a clue about soccer going on about Keano, Trap and the rest? Did he balk back in the day when Ireland met the Pope in Italia 90? If he did, then at least he's consistent, but I suspect he didn't because he thinks soccer is the game that people should be in thrall to, not that nasty posh rugby. If he drove down to Offaly now and saw the West Offaly Lions playing rugby in the heart of GAA country, maybe he'd realise this rugby thing has actually taken root.

They;re all fighting for second place behind the GAA in the battle for hearts and minds though!