The most popular sports from

the United Kingdom

Sport is playing an important role in the everyday life of the British people, from the children
from the first grade, up to the third generation, almost all of them are practicing at least one sport.
Most of the sports that we practice today were founded in the United Kingdom, because the
britains are very creatives and innovatives and they have a great interest in sports. And for those
reasons in Great Britain we can find almost all the sports from all around the world.
The most popular sports form the United Kingdom and the ones that was given birth in this
region are: football, rugby, cricket, golf, tennis, badminton, hockey, boxing, snooker, billiards and
curling.

Football

The modern global game of

football evolved out of traditional
football games played in England in the
19th century and today is the highest
profile sport by a very wide margin. This
has been the case for generations, but the
gap is widely perceived to have
increased since the early 1990s, and
football's dominance is often seen as a
threat to other sports.
The game of football is any of
several similar team sports, of similar
origins which involve advancing a ball
into a goal area in an attempt to score. Many of these involve kicking a ball with the foot to score a
goal, though not all codes of football using kicking as a primary means of advancing the ball or
scoring. The most popular of these sports worldwide is association football, more commonly known
as just "football" or "soccer".

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 The English football league system includes
hundreds of inter-linked leagues, consisting of
thousands of clubs, topped by four fully
professional divisions. The Premier League at the
top, is the most-watched football league in the
world. Below this, The Football League has three
divisions and then the Football Conference has a
national division and two feeder regional leagues.
The two main cup competitions in England are the
FA Cup, which is open to every men's football team
in England, though only professional clubs ever
reach the last few rounds, and the League Cup
(currently known as the Carling Cup), which is for the ninety-two professional clubs in the four main
professional divisions only.
England has over a hundred fully professional clubs in total, which is considerably more than
any other country in Europe. English teams have been successful in European Competitions
including some who have become European Cup/UEFA Champions League winners: Liverpool
(five times), Manchester United (three times), Nottingham Forest (twice) and Aston Villa. More
clubs from England have won the European Cup than any other country
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate countries in international
competition and, as a consequence, the UK does not compete as a single team in football events at
the Olympic Games. There are proposals to have a UK team take part in the 2012 Summer Olympics
but the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish football associations have declined to participate, fearing
that it would undermine their independent status. England has been the most successful of the home
nations, winning the World Cup on home soil in 1966, although there has historically been a close-
fought rivalry between England and Scotland.

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped

field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as
many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus
limit the runs scored by the batting team. A run is scored by the striking batsman hitting the ball with
his bat, running to the opposite end of the pitch and touching the crease there without being
dismissed. The teams switch between batting and fielding at the end of an innings.

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 In professional cricket the length of a game ranges from 20 overs of six bowling deliveries per
side to Test cricket played over five days. The Laws of Cricket are maintained by the International
Cricket Council (ICC) and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) with additional Standard Playing
Conditions for Test matches and One Day Internationals.
Cricket was first played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th
century, it had developed into the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led
to cricket being played overseas and by the mid-19th century the first international matches were
being held. The ICC, the game's governing body, has ten full members.

Rugby

The origin of rugby football is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school
football at Rugby School in 1823 when William Webb-Ellis is said to have picked up the ball and
run with it. Although this tale is anecdotal, the Rugby World Cup trophy is named after him. Rugby
football stems from the form of game played at Rugby School, which old pupils initially took to
university.
The first rugby football international took place on 27 March 1871, played between England
and Scotland. By 1881 both Ireland and Wales had representative teams, and in 1883 the first
international competition, the Home Nations Championship had begun.
Rugby union is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century.
One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. It is played with
an oval-shaped ball on a field up to 100 metres long and 70 metres wide with H-shaped goal posts on
each goal line.
The International Rugby Board (IRB) has been the governing body for rugby union since its
formation in 1886. Currently, 115 national unions are members of the IRB. In 1995, the IRB
removed restrictions on payments to players, making the game openly professional at the highest
level for the first time.
The Rugby World Cup, first held in 1987, takes place every four years, with the winner of the
tournament receiving the Webb Ellis Cup. The Six Nations in Europe and the Tri Nations in the
southern hemisphere are major international competitions held annually.

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 Golf

Golf is a precision club-and-ball sport, in which competing players (or golfers), using many
types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course while employing the fewest
number of strokes.
It is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area. Instead, the
game is played on golf "courses", each of which features a unique design, although courses typically
consist of either nine or eighteen holes. Golf is defined, in the rules of golf, as "playing a ball with a
club from the teeing ground into the hole by a stroke or successive strokes in accordance with the
Rules."
Golf competition is generally played for the lowest number of strokes by an individual, known
simply as stroke play, or the lowest score on the most individual holes during a complete round by
an individual or team, known as match play.
Modern competitive golf originated in Scotland. In the early 20th century British golfers were
the best in the world, winning nearly all of the U.S. Open championships before World War I.
American golfers later became dominant, but Britain has continued to produce leading golfers, with
an especially strong period in the 1980s and 1990s.
Golf is the sixth most popular sport, by participation, in the UK. The Open Championship,
which is played each July on a number of British golf courses on a rotating basis, the majority of
them in Scotland, is the only men's major golf tournament which is played outside of the United
States.

Boxing

The United Kingdom played a key role in the evolution of modern boxing, with the
codification of the rules of the sport known as the Queensberry Rules in the 19th century.
British professional boxing offers some of the largest purses outside the United States to a few
elite professional boxers who become nationally known. British heavyweight contenders are
especially popular, but most British world champions have fought in the middling weight brackets.
The governing body of professional boxing is the British Boxing Board of Control. It is generally
felt that British professional boxing is in decline in the early years of the 21st century.

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 Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players

(singles) or between two teams of two players each
(doubles). Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a
hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the
opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played
at all levels of society at all ages. The sport can be played
by anyone who can hold a racket, including people in
wheelchairs.
The modern game of tennis originated in the United
Kingdom in the late 19th century as "lawn tennis" which
has close connections to various field/lawn games as well
as to the ancient game of real tennis.
The Championships, Wimbledon, or simply
Wimbledon, is the oldest tennis tournament in the world
and is considered the most prestigious. It has been held at
the All England Club in the London suburb of Wimbledon
since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis
tournaments – the other three Majors are the Australian
Open, French Open and US Open – and the only one still
played on the game's original surface, grass, which gave the
game of lawn tennis its name.
The tournament takes place over two weeks in late June and early July, culminating with the
Ladies' and Gentlemen's Singles Final, scheduled respectively for the second Saturday and Sunday.
Each year, five major events are contested, as well as four junior events and four invitational events.
Tennis is enjoyed by millions of recreational players and is also a hugely popular worldwide
spectator sport, especially the four Grand Slam tournaments.

Badminton

Badminton is a racquet sport played by either two opposing

players (singles) or two opposing pairs (doubles), who take
positions on opposite halves of a rectangular court that is divided
by a net. Players score points by striking a shuttlecock (also known
as a shuttle, bird, or birdy) with their racquet so that it passes over
the net and lands in their opponents' half of the court. Each side
may only strike the shuttlecock once before it passes over the net. A
rally ends once the shuttlecock has struck the floor.
The beginnings of Badminton can be traced to mid-18th
century British India, where it was created by British military
officers stationed there.
The new sport was definitively launched in 1873 at the
Badminton House, Gloucestershire, owned by the Duke of
Beaufort. During that time, the game was referred to as "The Game
of Badminton," and the game's official name became Badminton.

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 Hockey

A game played on ice with a curved bat and a ball existed before Ice Hockey in the form of
Colf on ice, which was a popular game in the Low Countries between the Middle Ages. The game
was played with a wooden curved bat (called Colf or Kolf) and a ball made of wood or leather
between two poles or simply convenient nearby landmarks, with the object of hitting the chosen
point with the least number of strokes.
However, most believe that ice hockey evolved from stick-and-ball games, played outdoors,
and adapted to the icy conditions of Canada in the 19th century. The games of British soldiers and
immigrants to Canada, influenced by stick-and-ball games of First Nations, evolved to become a
game played on ice skates, often played with a puck, and played with sticks made by the Mi'kmaq of
Nova Scotia. The name of hockey itself has no clear origin, though the first known mention of the
word 'hockey' in English dates to 1799 in England.

Snooker

Snooker is a cue sport that is played on a

large green baize-covered table with pockets
in each of the four corners and in the middle
of each of the long side cushions. A regular
(full-size) table is 12 × 6 ft (3.7 × 1.8 m). It is
played using a cue and snooker balls: one
white cue ball, 15 red balls worth one point
each, and six balls of different colours: yellow
(2 points), green (3), brown (4), blue (5), pink
(6) and black (7). A player (or team) wins a
frame (individual game) of snooker by scoring
more points than the opponent(s), using the
cue ball to pot the red and coloured balls. A
player wins a match when a certain number of
frames have been won.
Snooker, generally regarded as having
been invented in India by British Army
officers, is popular in many of the English-

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speaking and Commonwealth countries,with top professional players attaining multi-million pound
career earnings from the game. The sport is particularly and increasingly popular in China.
The game of snooker grew in the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, and
by 1927 the first World Snooker Championship had been organised by Joe Davis who, as a
professional English billiards and snooker player, moved the game from a pastime activity into a
more professional sphere. Joe Davis won every world championship until 1946 when he retired. The
game went into a decline through the 1950s and 1960s with little interest generated outside of those
who played. In 1959, Davis introduced a variation of the game, known as snooker plus, to try to
improve the game's popularity by adding two extra colours. However, it never caught on.
The UK Championship was first held in 1977 in Tower Circus, Blackpool as the United
Kingdom Professional Snooker Championship, an event open only to British residents and passport
holders.

Billiards

English billiards, called simply billiards in

many former British colonies and in Great Britain
where it originated, is a hybrid form of carom and
pocket billiards played on a billiard table.
Billiards is less well known as "the English
game", "the all-in game" and "the common
game".
The game is for two players or teams. Two
cue balls (originally both white and one marked
for example with a black dot, but more recently
one white, one yellow) and a red object ball are
used. Each player or team uses a different cue
ball.
The first governing body of the game, the English Billiards Association, was formed in the UK
in 1885, a period that saw a number of sporting bodies founded across the British sporting world. By
the mid-20th century, the principal sanctioning body was the Billiards Association and Control
Council (later the Billiards and Snooker Control Council).
In the 19th century and up through the mid-1950s, a common way for championship titles to
change hands was by a challenge match. A challenge was issued to a championship title holder
accompanied by stake money ("acclamation") held by a third party. Up until the first organised
professional tournament in 1870, all English billiards champions were decided by challenge.

Curling

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area. It is
related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard.
Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called
"rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each
team has eight stones. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game, points being
scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is
completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones. A game may consist of ten or eight ends.
Curling is thought to have been invented in medieval Scotland, with the first written reference
to a contest using stones on ice coming from the records of Paisley Abbey.

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 Evidence that curling existed in Scotland in the early 16th century includes a curling stone
inscribed with the date 1511 (uncovered along with another bearing the date 1551) when an old pond
was drained at Dunblane, Scotland.
In the early history of curling, the
playing stones (or rocks) were simply
flat-bottomed river stones that were
sometimes notched or shaped; the
thrower, unlike those of today, had
little control over the stone, and relied
more on luck than on skill and
strategy.
Outdoor curling was very
popular in Scotland between the 16th
and 19th centuries, as the climates
provided good ice conditions every
winter. Scotland is home to the
international governing body for curling, the World Curling Federation, Perth, which originated as a
committee of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, the mother club of curling.
Today, the game is most firmly established in Canada, having been taken there by Scottish
emigrants. The Royal Montreal Curling Club, the oldest established sports club still active in North
America.

In conclusion, the British people are very atached to sport, because they always want to be in
shape. They love to create and to inovate sports, to spread them around the world, and to import
them from other parts of the globe. United Kingdom has been and will be a sports-loving country
and is always among the first in the sports competitions, such as for example the Olympics,
Champions League in football and many other international gender competitions.

Dumitru Adrian-Viorel
Clasa a X-a L