Hockey or Soccer

[Jericho]

Yea put a football player (soccer for North Americans) in hockey equipment and on the ice & the minute a REAL hockey player skates by said footballer/soccer player and he feels a breeze the footballer/soccer player will be on the ice clutching a body part writhing in mock pain. Now put a hockey player in cleats and shin pads/guards on the "pitch" and see him get red carded & tossed out for being "too aggressive". Hockey players would "destroy" any footballer/soccer player. No footballer/soccer player has the physical endurance to match a hockey player's. The reason football/soccer is a "world" sport is because even the poorest of the poor can play it because the only equipment you need is something round that even remotely resembles a soccer ball to kick around. Now compare trying to put a roughly 22 cm (8.65 inches) in diameter for a regulation size 5 ball into an 8' high X 24' wide goal versus 1" thick X 3" diameter puck into 4' X 6' goal (while skating & with a hockey stick). It doesn't take a genius to figure out which sport requires more "skill". Pfffffffftttttttt.........Jericho.......get a fuckin' clue!

Golf clap.....Yes, riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight, you keep telling yourself that!

[Jericho]

Yea put a football player (soccer for North Americans) in hockey equipment and on the ice & the minute a REAL hockey player skates by said footballer/soccer player and he feels a breeze the footballer/soccer player will be on the ice clutching a body part writhing in mock pain. Now put a hockey player in cleats and shin pads/guards on the "pitch" and see him get red carded & tossed out for being "too aggressive". Hockey players would "destroy" any footballer/soccer player. No footballer/soccer player has the physical endurance to match a hockey player's. The reason football/soccer is a "world" sport is because even the poorest of the poor can play it because the only equipment you need is something round that even remotely resembles a soccer ball to kick around. Now compare trying to put a roughly 22 cm (8.65 inches) in diameter for a regulation size 5 ball into an 8' high X 24' wide goal versus 1" thick X 3" diameter puck into 4' X 6' goal (while skating & with a hockey stick). It doesn't take a genius to figure out which sport requires more "skill". Pfffffffftttttttt.........Jericho.......get a fuckin' clue!

Can't edit my last post, so....

Real easy to barge into each other and start chucking punches when you're wearing all that padding. Go on without it, the rest of the world might start believing it.

Pfffffffftttttttt.........Hoser.......get a fuckin' clue!

[rodinuk]

I assume the Poll question relates to Ice Hockey which is colloquially referred to as hockey by American/Canadian folk. Ice Hockey is also played rather well by Scandinavian and former Eastern Bloc countries whose players are present in the US/Canadian teams akin to the way we import players from anywhere else these days. (Watford FC now has 15 Udinese players apparently!)

And yes it was a good school Stavros mind you in those days hockey was more of a game associated with the female gender at school and I think the success of the Men's British Olympic squad in securing a gold medal changed the perception of the sport to an extent.

The playing field at school resembled the kind of terrain more suited to testing the Mars Lunar Rover than athletics. As well as your seasonal depiction of appropriate sports with 'one-size fits all equipment' we were subjected to rounders, softball and cross-country through some particulary pungent sprout fields when it was pissing down with rain.

The public pool was closed because it had a pre-alumina stressed concrete roof and by the time it was repaired we were being honed for academic examinations to the exclusion of all else.

[bassman2546]

Hockey without a doubt. I fail to see the excitement in a game that may only have one goal scored by both teams combined. Hockey is the fastest team sport on a smaller stage that allows for much more excitement.

[Prospero]

North America seems to miss the finesse of football (soccer that is). Oh well....

[Stavros]

I assume the Poll question relates to Ice Hockey which is colloquially referred to as hockey by American/Canadian folk. Ice Hockey is also played rather well by Scandinavian and former Eastern Bloc countries whose players are present in the US/Canadian teams akin to the way we import players from anywhere else these days. (Watford FC now has 15 Udinese players apparently!)

And yes it was a good school Stavros mind you in those days hockey was more of a game associated with the female gender at school and I think the success of the Men's British Olympic squad in securing a gold medal changed the perception of the sport to an extent.

The playing field at school resembled the kind of terrain more suited to testing the Mars Lunar Rover than athletics. As well as your seasonal depiction of appropriate sports with 'one-size fits all equipment' we were subjected to rounders, softball and cross-country through some particulary pungent sprout fields when it was pissing down with rain.

The public pool was closed because it had a pre-alumina stressed concrete roof and by the time it was repaired we were being honed for academic examinations to the exclusion of all else.

Ah those were the days! The provision of lessons in sport, like music, should not be a hit and miss affair, but I fear that they are, even though students are supposed to do it. I can only hope it has improved since I was in school. I never heard of softball, but I do now recall cross country running, which in our case was cross-urban. We had one qualified PE teacher, the rest who 'mucked in' were either the teachers who played golf with him, or the music teacher who liked rubbing soothing oil on the thighs of a boy who, luckily, could run fast. Said teacher showed no interest in the two gay lads in our class, both of whom had letters from their mums exempting them from swimming. They both had a hard time -one of the gay lads was also the Jew repeatedly picked on by the 'Civics' teacher, a nasty ex-policeman from Rhodesia. Yet I met the other gay lad by chance years later and he was with his boyfriend and I had never seen him look so happy. He probably even swims now too.

[Sulka_bewitched_me]

Can't edit my last post, so....

Real easy to barge into each other and start chucking punches when you're wearing all that padding. Go on without it, the rest of the world might start believing it.

Pfffffffftttttttt.........Hoser.......get a fuckin' clue!

What, did you have to Google to find an appropriate insult lol? Hmmmm hoser hasn't been used by any Canadian um like since 1983! Maybe we're showing our age Jericho? Anyways.......ANYONE can play soccer while a "select few" can play hockey. THAT is the difference in the "skill" department. Like I said, just brush against a footballer/soccer player and they're on the ground writhing in agony. As for fighting in hockey you are obviously uneducated on the sport as you have fallen into the typical trap of stereotyping the sport for that and that alone. I've played both sports and can tell you at the speed that hockey takes place as opposed to football/soccer you'd be a complete imbecile to even attempt to play hockey without padding (unless you want to end up in a hospital for a few months). You can get away without padding on the pitch because the pace is as slow as watching paint dry. Are there some magnificent plays in football/soccer? Absolutely, but nowhere near as many in 90 minutes as opposed to 60 minutes if you were to average it out.

[Sulka_bewitched_me]

North America seems to miss the finesse of football (soccer that is). Oh well....

The only finesse I've seen (lately) has been that of the Spanish National Team in the World and Euro Cups respectfully. MOST football is insipid and tedious in it's execution & delivery.

[rodinuk]

Soccer played on an open pitch (345x222 feet) with 11 players (+ 6 subs ) who apart from injury/substitution/red-carding will stay the course of two 45+ minute halves with a 15 minute break for a typical game. A player's only protection is a pair of shin guards.

Ice Hockey played on bounded ice (200x85 feet) with 6 players rotated (on the fly sometimes) from a squad of 18-ish over three 20 minute periods. Players are protected by substantial padding.

Soccer players dont' 'get away without wearing padding' since they wear studded-boots and during tackles these can inflict injury on unprotected bodies at speed so blood injuries are common. A ball contested in the air can result in an elbow in the face causing a broken jawbone etc. granted some gamesmanship is involved in trying to win a free-kick from an advantageous position or a penalty. Broken legs are not uncommon and knee injuries too.

In Ice Hockey fighting is officially prohibited in the rules (so you think they'd have got a grip on that by now) but enjoyed by the crowd. In soccer we're more civilised and prefer to eliminate violence by penalising it.

ANYONE can play soccer while a "select few" can play hockey

This doesn't make any sense at all. Blanket statements seldom work, ask yourself why there's a lively transfer market in Soccer for example. I'll leave you to ponder.

[Chiba5]

Has anybody ever seen Slapshot? It's one of the best Hockey films ever