How do you become a British citizen?

What is the grand slam and world cup?

 

And no padding. American wimps....

 

Actually it's all the padding and the armour in American football that causes the injuries. Rather than protect a person from heavy contact, it just inflicts more damage on the other player.

The grand slam is the title you win in the Six Nations competition (a mini-league that takes every year between the Six top Rugby Union international teams in Europe, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy - Italy are recent newcomers and it used to be the Five Nations), if you win all your matches. The team that loses all their games (usually Wales, although recently it's often Italy) gets the Wooden Spoon - this is because the Welsh are famous for making top quality Wooden Spoons.

The World Cup does exactly what it says on the tin. They have a World Cup in most international team sports, Football, Rugby, Cricket etc. where all the international teams compete to win it. The giants in Rugby are England, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand (the All Blacks, famous for winning just about everything), with Scotland, Wales and South Africa not too far behind. Last World Cup was played in Australia with England beating Australia in the final in extra time (extra time is played if the scores are level after Full Time, which is 80 minutes plus stoppages in Rugby), in October last year.

It's like the World Series you have in Baseball, which America wins every year. I mean that's quite an achievement really - a worldwide competition and yet you win it EVERY year, so well done to you! Sometimes I wonder if one year a country other than the USA will win it, but nah, it's never going to happen

(irony! irony! they've all got it...)

 

I'll tell you this. My friends play without padding. Why would one play any other way? That's like playing football with your hands.

 

but you lot DO play football with your hands. And so do we. Rugby Football.

Aussies to do - they have Aussie Rules although I think Rugby is slightly more popular there.

And of course in Ireland there's the wonderful sport Gaelic Football - which is like football but you use your hands, there's no such thing as dangerous play, and the scoring system is like Hurling where you can score 3 points for a goal, or you can score a point by skying it over the bar (perhaps David Beckham would be suited to that ), but again Rugby is the bigger a sport there, as is Football.

 

When I said football I meant what you call football and we call soccer.