etcetera

do they work in England?

Nice to see ManU winning emphatically in FA cup against Burton Albion. A thumping victory, 5-0, was always on the cards. I read about it in BBC report on GPRS (wow, GPRS always comes handy when checking scores). But here's the web edition of the report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/fa_cup/4612320.stm

The interesting story is not the ManU. You always expect them to win against a conference side ( for all those who don't know what conference is, it is the fifth tier in English football). The story, for me, is that around 11000 Burton Albion fans travelled all the way to Manchester just to see the match. I just searched Wikipedia to find more about Burton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton-upon-Trent
It says Burton has population of around 60,500. It is at a distance of 70 miles from Manchester (Google Earth zindabad!). So on a one fine evening, one fifth of city population travels 70 miles to watch just a football match. Can you imagine this in India?

Well the number of spectators for sports in England, or for that matter in any Western country always amazes me. How do people find time and money to go to the matches? Also, the enthusiasm and loyalty of the fans is really awesome. When will we see the same in India? Let's hope we see it sooner.

posted by ninad @ 10:40 pm