Why do so many modern sports have British origins?
Many popular sports originate in the UK, including football, golf, billiards, rugby, field hockey, tennis, cricket, curling, darts, snooker, squash, badminton, rowing, horse racing, and more. Even sports like baseball and bandy trace their origins to the UK.
The UK was one of the first countries to rapidly industrialise and urbanise. This created greater mobility and more leisure opportunities, particularly for the middle and upper classes.
Elite boarding schools (sisäoppilaslaitos) were instrumental in developing, codifying (setting official rules), and even inventing sports to occupy, strengthen, and instill character in the thousands of boys living in boarding schools. Rugby, for example, is named after Rugby School, where it was invented. These schools also created codified rules for football in the 19th century so that different schools could play each other. Sport, just as it is today, was seen as an excellent tool for developing stamina, skill, integrity, and team-building.
At the same time that sports were being developed and codified in these schools, the British Empire was expanding. Graduates from these elite schools took key positions across the Empire and established sporting clubs worldwide.
Finally sport is a wonderful small talk topic which can be opened with “ Did you see the X game… “, “Have you been following the X championships?” “ I saw your local team did well in X“.
Don’t be afraid to talk players and statistics – sports fans usually love to debate. From the sports popular in Finland, Formula 1, ice hockey, and rally driving might be the best ones to develop a conversation. Although foreigners would certainly love to also hear about unusual Finnish sports such as wife carrying, Finnish baseball, and swamp football.
In the USA ice hockey would work as topic, as could the other big three (American football, basketball, and baseball). The best bet for small talk conversation outside the USA is football (known as soccer in the USA). The previous and upcoming European and World Cups, and the Champions League simply unite billions like nothing else on earth. (Over 5 billion people watched World Cup Qatar 2022). In the word of the great Liverpool manager, Bill Shankly, “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that!”
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