Into the recent past, Australians often called football "wogball", associating it with recent immigrants from the Mediterranean, especially Italy and Greece. Yet that is the country where the English working class started again on its own terms, as far away as possible from the people who castigated use of the wrong fork or what have you. The greater popularity of cricket is of course attributable to the climate, but that of rugby is not, and nor is the existence of Australian rules, itself based on rugby.
See also the prevalence of rugby everywhere in New Zealand apart from football-loving Greater Wellington, with its longer history of immigration from Continental Europe and the Middle East, so that many of the clubs are of ethnic origin and retain those bases of support, although football is the most played sport among school-aged boys due to demographic changes. Yet this is a country where, for all the shifts among the very young, three fifths or more of the population descends from these Islands.
Maybe it'll come to be seen there as mostly a women's game like in America because it's the women who do well at it there?
ReplyDeleteThe same applies to England.
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