Part 2. The Sporting Spirit.

A. Keywords. neighbors, football match, fans, trouble, large crowds,

Vocabulary. affectionate, aggressive, knock out, smash, monster, terrace, rugby, Wimbledon.

Here are three short extracts from a conversation between a group of friends.

They are talking about football supporters.

Listen carefully and answer the following questions.

I. I have neighbors who, who are very nice, friendly, warm, affectionate people.

And I live near a football ground, Tottenham, and on Saturday, I avoid them.

Because they come back from the match about 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, drunk, aggressive, they scream, they shout.

And after the World Cup Fi-, after the World Cup when England got knocked out, I was in my local pub, and they came in and they started pushing people around and smashing glasses, and I was really frightened, and I walked out.

And I don't understand, I really don't understand, what it is about a football match that can turn ordinary, friendly people into monsters.

2. But do you think that's so of a lot of football fans?

I mean, I've heard other people say they've gone to football matches and there's been absolutely no trouble in the terraces at all, and people have been sat there, you know, quite happily, opposing teams next to each other.

Oh, but it obviously does happen a lot, I mean, you see it on the news.

What happens when British fans go to Europe?

That's always trouble, isn't there?

Well, but it's, it's not....it's... In Brazil, for example, and where I also been to football matches, people go to enjoy themselves, and there is no aggression or violence, or there's nothing like that.

It seems particularly, It seems particular to England and a few other countries that football provides people with the opportunity to show their most violent, aggressive natures.

3. But Perhaps it's just a function of people getting together in crowds, large groups of people getting into enclosed spaces together.

But large crowds go to other kinds of matches, go to rugby matches, go to Wimbledon to watch tennis. Go to pop concerts...

They get to Wimbledon to watch tennis, they sit there silently throughout.

Yes, it's interesting that one of the solutions that the police have think might work is to have all seater matches, for example, where everybody is seated.

B. Keywords. sport, goodwill, competitive, win, mimic, warfare,attitude.

Vocabulary. cricket, inclination, orgy, deduce, utmost, patriotism, disgrace,

combative, instinct, mimic, warfare, spectator, absurd, at any rate, virtue.

The following passage you're going to hear is from "The Sporting Spirit" written by George Orwell.

Now listen and enjoy. Supply the missing words.

I'm always amazed when I hear people say that sport creates goodwill between the nations.

And that if only the common people of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield.

Even if one didn't know from concrete examples, the 1936 Olympic games for an instance, the international sporting contest led to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

Nearly all the sports practiced nowadays are competitive.

You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win.

On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it's possible to play simply for the fun and exercises.

But as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage, combative instincts are aroused.

Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this.

At the international level, sport is frankly mimic warfare.

But the significant thing is not the behavior of the players, but the attitudes of spectators.

And behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe, at any rate for short periods, that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.