научная статья по теме BRITAIN AT PLAY Языкознание

Текст научной статьи на тему «BRITAIN AT PLAY»

Britain At Play

ootball, or Soccer (short for "Association football"), is the most popular sport in all parts of Britain. The season lasts from August until the end of April, and most boys' schools, as well as factories and offices, have their own teams which usually play on Saturday afternoons. These amateur games draw many spectators, but the majority of football enthusiasts go to watch professional teams. Professional players receive a weekly wage, and the clubs they play for are business concerns which make profits from the sale of tickets. It is not unusual for over 50,000 people to attend matches between well-known clubs of this kind. Professional sides compete for the Football Association Cup, a trophy awarded at the end of each season to the team which has won the "Cup Final". This important game is always played at Wembley Stadium, the place where many events in the 1948 Olympic Games were held.

British footballers play Rugger, or Rugby Football, as well as soccer. In this game, each team has fifteen men, and an oval-shaped ball is used. In Rugger, the goals are shaped like the letter H: there are two posts, with a cross-bar running horizontally between them.

A match begins with the kick-off, after which any player may kick the ball, or pick it up and run with it in his hands. Players are not allowed to throw the ball over the cross-bar. The ball must never be thrown forward. If it goes towards the opposing goal after touching the hand or arm of a player, the referee orders a "scrummage". Then eight players from each team gather round in a rough circle. They stand with their heads down, ready for the ball to be thrown in among them. After some pushing, the ball is swept back through the players' legs, and the winning side can start an attack on the opponents' goal.

Unlike soccer, Rugby Football is played a great deal at public schools and at the universities.

Another popular winter game is Hockey, which both men and women play.

This game takes place on a grass field 100 yards long and 60 yards wide, goal itself is only 4 yards wide; it is much smaller than a football goal. There are eleven players on each team, armed with hockey sticks. Their aim is to propel the small white leather ball into the opposing goal, using only their sticks.

When the game starts, two players, one from each team, "bully off". To do this, they stand facing each other, with their own goal on their right hand sides, in the centre of the pitch, and after tapping the ground between the ball and their goal and crossing their sticks over the ball alternately three times, each tries to hit the ball into play. A bully is played in the centre of the ground after each goal has been scored. During play, the ball may be caught in a player's hands, but it must be released again immediately, and struck with the stick. The goalkeeper is allowed to kick the ball but otherwise it must not be propelled in any way, except with the stick. A goal is scored when the ball goes between the opposing team's goal posts, and beneath the cross-bar. One point is awarded for each goal.

There are special rinks in the large towns at which ice-hockey matches are held between professional teams which usually contain many Canadian players. Amateur ice-hockey is very rarely played in Britain. Few Britons can skate or ski, since the lakes are not often frozen hard enough for people to walk on them, and snow lies on the ground for only a few weeks in most parts of the country. Sometimes, there is enough snow in the Scottish Highlands for skiing, but

the facilities there are by no means as good as those in some other countries. Every spring, skiing competitions, for which snow is specially imported from Norway, are held on Hampstead Heath, a big public park in London.

The game that English people like most in summer is Cricket. Like football, this game is played by professionals as well as amateurs.

A cricket match is played on a grass field by two teams of eleven men. In the centre, twenty-two yards apart, there are two wickets made up of three pieces of wood called stumps, stuck into the ground. When the game starts, two batsmen from the first team come on to the field, and stand one in front of each wicket, with a long wooden bat in their hands. Bowlers from the opposing team throw a ball made of hard leather at the wickets, and the batsmen try to hit the ball with their bats before it reaches their wickets. If the ball touches the wicket, the batsman defending it is out, and he must return to the pavillion (or dressing room) and be replaced by another member of his own team. But if he manages to hit the ball away into the field, he runs quickly to the second batsman's wicket, while the second batsman runs to the first man's place. Each time a batsman runs between the wickets after hitting the ball himself, he scores a "run", and he makes three of four runs before members of the opposing team, "fielders", who are waiting in different parts of the field, can catch the ball and return it to their bowler. If the ball reaches the bowler while a batsman is between the wickets, he is "run out" and his innings (his turn to bat) comes to an end.

A really good cricketer can stay at the wicket for many hours before he is out, and occasionally batsmen score a century (a hundred runs) during their innings. When every member of the first team has been in to bat, they take their places as fielders, while their own bowlers attack the batsmen of the second team. Each side bats twice during a game, and at the end, the side with the greatest number of runs wins the match.

Most English counties have a cricket team in which amateurs and professionals (sometimes called "gentlemen and players") together play games against other county teams. The oldest and most famous cricket club is the Marylebone Cricket Club, which has its headquarters at Lord's Cricket Ground in London. The game is played in most Commonwealth countries, and every summer a team from one of them comes to England to play the M.C.C. (which represents England) in five big Test Matches lasting five days each. Australia and England are particularly keen rivals at cricket, and the winner of each series of test matches in these two countries is said to have won "the Ashes".

The Ashes date from 1882, when Australia first beat England in a test match series. The victory was celebrated by an obituary notice in the Sporting Times, and this created the Ashes legend. The wickets of the last match are said to have been burnt and presented to the captain of the English side by the Australians. Since that time, the Ashes have changed hands many times in theory, as a trophy, but they are actually kept in the "Long Room" at Lord's, a museum of cricket history.

Cricket is a very serious game in England. If the M.C.C. are playing badly against a Commonwealth team, the newspapers report the news in mournful headlines, and the situation is discussed in the streets as if it were a national disaster. The rules for playing the game are so respected that they are spoken of as the "laws" of cricket. More than any other game, cricket has contributed to the language, and many phrases and words in common use originate from it. To say "it's not cricket" means that the action referred to is unfair and unsportsmanlike. To "hit him for six" is to strike a man very hard indeed, as a batsman must hit the ball if he is to get six runs for one blow. To "stump" a man in cricket is to hit his stumps with the ball, and in ordinary language, you stump somebody when you present him with a difficult problem he cannot easily solve.

Tennis is a popular summer game in England. It is usually played on grass courts that are soft and springy to the feet. Most public parks have both hard courts and grass one. Wimbledon,

in the southern suburbs of London, is the centre of a great international festival held every summer, at which tennis players from all over the world compete.

No part of the British Isles is more than seventy miles from the coast, so there are plenty of opportunities for Swimming in the sea. Big holiday resorts, like Brighton, have bathing stations where swimmers can change their clothes in comfort and have showers before or after a dip. There are lifeguards for bathers who might need help, and red danger flags when the sea is too rough for swimming. Open air pools and indoor swimming baths can be found in nearly all British towns.

Every summer, many people attempt to swim the English Channel. The distance from England to France is only 22 miles at the narrowest point, but owing to strong currents, swimmers are not able to take a direct course, and they actually go two or three times that distance. On the journey across, they are escorted by a small boat, in case they should get into difficulties. A Channel swimming race is organised each year, in which prizes are given for completing the course, and a special award is made to the winner.

Bowls is a leisurely summer game played mainly by middle-aged and elderly people.

A bowl is a large ball made of wood or rubber, slightly out of spherical shape, which is gently rolled from one side of a square, smooth lawn (called a rink or green) to hit a small white ball on the other side. Bowls is usually played as a team game by more than two contending bowlers, but there is no fixed limit to the numbers in each team, so long as they are equal.

Golf can be played all the year round, and it is particularly popular in Scotland.

On a golf course eighteen small holes are placed a considerable distance apart. The object is to hit a small white ball with special sticks (called clubs), so that it goes into each of the holes in turn. A good golf course is laid out over undulating country, in which it is difficult to estimate the direction and speed which must be given to the ball. The ball is hit from a teeing ground, or tee, towards the appropriate hole, which is marked with a coloured flag.

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