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How Many Sports are still "Working Class" in the UK?

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    How Many Sports are still "Working Class" in the UK?

    In the 1970s I think you could say that Rugby League was working-class and football generally was apart from the times it was given royal patronage (internationals, Cup finals). Cricket was working class at northern local league level but probably not at Test level. Sports that started in pubs and clubs (darts, snooker) clearly were. Dog racing was more working class than horse racing but betting shops were working class. Saturday afternoon wrestling, obviously, but that was fake. Not sure about speedway.

    Today it's trickier to make this distinction because some of the working-class has been absorbed into the lower middle class and there's a sub-class of people in deep poverty that may ignore sports except maybe snooker on telly.

    OTOH I have lived in the US for several years and I could be wrong. Stuart Maconie's book on this, "Pie At Night", was crap IMHO.
    Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 14-09-2018, 22:38.

    #2
    I'd argue RL - at least in the Northern heartlands - is still resolutely working class. In my experience, anyway, and I spent a lot of time on coaches to and from places like Keighley, Warrington and <shudder> Hull.

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      #3
      Coursing, bar billiards?

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        #4
        Rugby League is still working class here, Union very elitist. Aussie Rules transcends class, especially in its Victorian heartland where it's almost a religion. Cricket, who knows? A-League also transcends I think.

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          #5
          Snooker is a peculiar one. Obviously started off as an upper class pursuit - began among the officers of the Raj - came back to Britain and was rapidly adopted by the working men's clubs and pubs. Probably remains the only sport you're as likely to see being played in a 'by invitation only' gentleman's club in Bloomsbury as you are in a pub in Blackpool with a "no shirt no service" sign on the bar. Curious that when they took it to TV somebody decided to make all the players wear suits - darts never attempted any such pretence.
          Last edited by Rogin the Armchair fan; 15-09-2018, 08:49.

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            #6
            Stock car and banger racing.

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              #7
              As is, in response to the opening post, speedway - which is resolutely working class.

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                #8
                Originally posted by Third rate Leszno View Post
                Stock car and banger racing.
                Greyhound racing must fall into this category.

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                  #9
                  Rugby Union is the posh sport in most of England, played by public schoolboys etc etc. But it's not posh in South Wales or the West Country. Definitely working class in Gloucester for example. Although I think it appeals beyond a particular class.

                  Ice Hockey is more working class than hockey.

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                    #10
                    Who are "working class" in fucking Gloucester?

                    Where I went to school in Devon in the 80s Rugby was the grammar school game. Only yobbos played football or indeed went to the football club at all. Had many a happy night at the football club disco.

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                      #11
                      Have you ever been to Gloucester, Rogin. It's rough as fuck.

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                        #12
                        Darts.

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                          #13
                          I think Rogin went to Cheltenham and thought Gloucester was like it.

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                            #14
                            For all the creeping commercialisation and movement towards professionalism, still fair to say that both Gaelic football and hurling remain primarily working class sports.

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                              #15
                              Boxing?

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                                #16
                                How are people answering this question?

                                Are you thinking of grass roots participants, elite participants, spectators, people who watch on television, people who own and manage clubs?

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                                  #17
                                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                  How are people answering this question?

                                  Are you thinking of grass roots participants, elite participants, spectators, people who watch on television, people who own and manage clubs?
                                  Personally, participants and spectators - rugby, clichéd as that sounds, remains the middle-class sport here.

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                                    #18
                                    There's no major professional sport in the US in which there is a commonality between participants and spectators, primarily because ticket prices are so high.

                                    You would need to go to something like lacrosse, though (real) football would come close if the teams involved were comprised largely of Americans.

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                                      #19
                                      I think the majority of people who watch American Football on television are working class, and the majority who play are working class. Obviously, they are largely from very racially different parts of the working class. Although the only people who can afford to go to actual games are now wealthy, I still think it's broadly a working class sport. This mostly applies to the NFL. College football is still working class in the states that have no NFL, but there's also a very middle class hipster "I'm too cool for NFL, I want something more earthy and real" element that's grabbed on to it across the rest of the country.

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                                        #20
                                        College football attendees are also increasingly skewing wealthy, particularly at "programs" that charge ridiculous amounts for tickets, suites and "personal seat licenses" (granting the holder the "right" to buy a ticket) in order to fund Pharonic building programmes and Croesus-like salaries for coaches. See also parking lots full of lavish motor homes and over-the-top tailgates. And of course the "boosters" who have always funded college football have by definition had money.

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                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Diable Rouge View Post
                                          For all the creeping commercialisation and movement towards professionalism, still fair to say that both Gaelic football and hurling remain primarily working class sports.
                                          In what remotely meaningful sense? Seriously what the hell are you talking about? Tell me more about the Kerry working class. That phrase has literally no meaning in the vast majority of Ireland. The irish Working class were primarily to be found in the UK and america. Where they had industries. Our society requires its own taxonomy. The GAA was traditionally backboned by Farmers and teachers, because they were the only ones who didn't have to emigrate.
                                          Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 15-09-2018, 23:12.

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                            College football is still working class in the states that have no NFL, but there's also a very middle class hipster "I'm too cool for NFL, I want something more earthy and real" element that's grabbed on to it across the rest of the country.
                                            I haven’t heard anyone say anything like that in about 30 or 35 years. But I definitely did then.

                                            It would take a while to explain, but college football felt a lot more “earthy and real,” relative to the NFL. The NFL really had its act together in terms of marketing and TV, while college sports were still bogged-down by petty rivalries, provincialism, and a lack of vision. That started to change, for better and worse, in the early 90s.

                                            These days, fans of both college and pro football all seem to be pretty cynical and mercenary. The legalization of gambling on it will just amplify that, I suspect.

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                              In the 1970s I think you could say that Rugby League was working-class and football generally was apart from the times it was given royal patronage (internationals, Cup finals). Cricket was working class at northern local league level but probably not at Test level. Sports that started in pubs and clubs (darts, snooker) clearly were. Dog racing was more working class than horse racing but betting shops were working class. Saturday afternoon wrestling, obviously, but that was fake. Not sure about speedway.

                                              Today it's trickier to make this distinction because some of the working-class has been absorbed into the lower middle class and there's a sub-class of people in deep poverty that may ignore sports except maybe snooker on telly.

                                              OTOH I have lived in the US for several years and I could be wrong. Stuart Maconie's book on this, "Pie At Night", was crap IMHO.
                                              I think that's a bit of a leap about snooker - it isn't the daytime TV staple that it used to be and I'd assume that most people in deep poverty have more things to worry about than the snooker.

                                              On speedway I remember the old WSC column from the early 90s called 'crap sports' or something which deliberately and succucintly dimissed the merits of all sports that weren't football, which summarised speedway's audience as "the type of working class families that voted Tory to keep the immigrants out and then got hammered by the poll tax", so that's one view, albeit a very dismissive one.

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                                How are people answering this question?

                                                Are you thinking of grass roots participants, elite participants, spectators, people who watch on television, people who own and manage clubs?
                                                For stock cars and what is generally termed short oval racing in the UK, it’s pretty much everyone. F1 stock cars at even the elite level are owned and run by people from working class backgrounds - often haulage operators, scrap yard owners, garage owners etc. I guess the nearest US sporting equivalent would be sprint cars. Tracks are often owned by someone else (eg greyhound racing association) and promoters tend to be either membership clubs or ex-competitors. Crowds are largely friends, family, people who like motorised violence and obsessives clutching clipboards and covered in oily sew-on patches.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Yes, that sounds a lot like much of the sprint and "dirt track" experience here. It was also very much the case of "Demolition Derby" when that was a thing.

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