Firstly, I have to agree with Townie that rugby union is better than football. In my opinion, rugby is by far the greatest game on the planet, but having said that, football is exciting in a way I can't quite explain.
On the face of it, football can be dull. It is a defensively oriented game where the mindset is that the winning team is the one that concedes the fewest goals, rather than the one that scores the most. I hope that makes sense.
But when a game of football is played between two well matched teams it can provide a spellbinding contest where, even a 0 - 0 draw leaves you feeling breathless at the end of it.
I'm a sporting lass. I grew up in a sporting family and embraced sport from early childhood. I love playing sport. I love the intensity of competition and the feeling of exhausted exhileration at the end of a game. Watching any sport isn't as good as playing, but it's still pretty darned good.
Perhaps the most significant cultural difference between football and rugby, Townie, is that football is all about the fans, whereas rugby is all about the players.
In football, the fans rule the game. Ask any manager who has been hounded out of his club by fans protests...!! At Real Madrid, if the fans start to wave white hankies at a match, then they're telling the directors that it's time for the manager to be sacked. And he invariably is. At Real Madrid, the people rule.
Football fans embrace their club in a way the players and owners don't. Players come and go. Managers come and go. But the fans are in it for life. To a football fan, the shirt... the badge... the history... it MEANS something. Football is the game of the masses.
Rugby, however, has the image of an elitist game. A "Game for ruffians played by gentlemen". But it's hard, challenging, physically intense and exhausting.... I know... I've played it. Rugby searches you like no other sport. If there is anything lacking in your character, then 80 minutes on a rugby pitch will expose it for all to see.
The game is all about the players, which makes it less tribal than football. Yes, there are club rivalries, but they find expression in post-match drinking contests... sing-songs... good natured banter. It's a different world.
To Leon, please allow me to explain a little of the game's origins. Founded at Rugby public school in England in the mid 19th century, the game was first devised for the children of gentlemen families who attended the school. These young men would one day grow up to be the people who would run the Empire and rugby football was intended to instil the qualities of courage, stoicism, organisation, determination, teamwork, leadership and fortitude.
In short, it was intended to produce men of a calibre who, the Victorians believed, would rule the world.
Britain no longer rules the world, but the nature of the game, in a playing sense, hasn't changed. As I said before... if you're lacking in any way, rugby will find you out.
Football, on the other hand, is "a game for gentlemen played by ruffians". It's the sport of the working classes... the masses... It caught on with the working classes, mostly in the industrial north and became their outlet from a life of exploitation, drudgery and dangerous, dirty, hard labour. A man who spent 70 hours a week down a coal pit for a pittance wage could run around in the fresh air and forget his desperately awful life for a while.
Football became escapism for the working classes.
These cultures have ingrained themselves into British society. They're so deep now that they're an integral part of our national character and even if we're no longer global masters at either sport, we still have our island mentality and we see them as "ours". We play them in our own way regardless of what the rest of the world does (even though the rest of the world does it better..!!).
We have our sporting institutions and rituals and they mean a lot to us. We know we're not the best, but we'd rather be mediocre on the world stage than change. It's OUR football, and OUR rugby. We love it as it is, warts and all.
These are our escapes from the everyday world. The allegiances forged in childhood last for life. The anticipation in the build up to a game isn't always matched by the eventual game itself, but when it is.... wow... it's worth the wait.
I suppose you have to be brought up with it to understand.