Other sports.

Most secondary schools have playing fields, and boys normally play rugger or soccer in winter and cricket and tennis in summer, while girls play handball, tennis, netball and hockey. Basketball is not played much. Although the British are fond of watching horses and dogs racing. They are not particularly interested in being spectators at ocassions when human beings compete. Athletics, sports and gymnastics are practiced at schools, but many towns have running tracks for public use. The school gym is usually equipped with climbing ropes (laná), parallel bars (bradlá), a vaulting horse (koza), rings (kruhy). On sports day prizes are awarded for the high jump, long jump, the hundred meter run, hurdles and other events. The more social adult games are golf and tennis are played by great numbers of people.

Rugby football.

Rugby football is also very popular. As you know, it is played with an oval ball, which is carried rather than kicked and players try to stop the man with the ball by throwing him bodily to the ground.

Football.

Let us survey the popular games of today. At the top of the list is Association Football, or "soccer", which in England is played by schoolboys and by thousands of amateur teams up and down the country. For most of the public, however, football is a professional's game, to be watched of Saturday afternoon at the local ground. In England and Wales there is a league of four divisions. There is an annual cup competition too. Thousands of club supporters watch the cup finals and there are millions of fans, and still others who do not actually follow the matches but fondly dream of winning a fortune by playing the pools every week.

Sport in Great Britain.

The English are great lovers of competitive sports, and when they are neither playing nor watching games they like to talk about them. England was first home of many of modern world's most popular sports. But today the English can hardly claim to excel in any form of sport when they engage in international competitions. Other countries, who have adopted the games together with sports English terminology are fired with far more ambition to win, whereas the British are renowned for playing the game with respect for rules and the opponents, winning with modesty and losing with grace.

Sailing and Windsurfing

When some families have time off, they go for a sail. The grander name for sailing is "yachting", but many boats are too small to be called a yacht. During the summer the river mouths and small harbours around the coast of Britain are crowded with yachts and sailing-boats of all kinds.
Windsurfing is one of the newest and most exciting of the windsports. The windsurfer steers the 3.66 metre surfboard by holding onto the pole and leaning out against the force of the wind in the sail. It is a fast sport.

Bowls

is played in the open in the summer on beautifully kept bowling .greens with big black wooden balls. The aim is to get the ball as near as possible to a little white ball (the "jack") placed about the length of a cricket pitch away from them. The art of the game consists in taking into account the fact that the ball being bowled ("the wood") is not properly balanced — it has a "bias". This ancient game is played mainly by middle-aged people, often in municipal parks.
A number of cinemas have been turned into bowling alleys providing entertainment for the whole family in the winter months.

Salmon and trout fishing in the mountain streams and rivers is an expensive hobby. High fees are paid to the owner of the river for the right to fish there. The fisherman uses an artificial fly which he throws on to the surface of the water; fly-fishing needs great skill.

Fishing

Of all the sports that people take an active part in, fishing is one of the most popular in Britain. There are about 4 million anglers in Britain. On Sundays on the banks of canals anglers sit for hours with their rods and wait for the fish to bite the worms on the hooks. They boast their size, weight and number of fish which they catch. Some enthusiasts enter for angling competitions. All along the sea-coast there is fishing, mainly from piers and boats. Coastal and deep sea fishing is free to all.