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The European cheeseburger.

Article Excerpt
Thirty thousand people in Federation Square watching World Cup Soccer, the new model A-League opening to large crowds around the country, and by-the-way it's football not soccer, so is the European game finally 'taking-off' and re-defining the Australian sporting landscape, or has globalization and the communications revolution dulled once refined Australian sporting tastes and so produced a rush on the 'European Cheeseburger'? A sporting flavour that is simple, easily consumed and everywhere.

While all cultures play games and compete in sport, the British tradition of competitive sport is a particularly rich one, including games such as cricket, soccer, lawn tennis, rugby, netball, golf, horse-racing, polo, table tennis, bowls and boxing. Little is known of the European tradition. With organized religion dominating the chronicling of European social history, the writings that do survive describe sport in relation to church activities and tend to trivialize games and competitions. In Britain, however, the development of religious tolerance saw the rise of political and personal freedom and the weaving of competitive individualism into the social fabric of the nation. In sixteenth and seventeenth Century England, Puritan antipathy to the suffering of animals put an end to the brutal 'sports' of cock fighting and bear baiting, and the survival of Puritan values through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries contributed to the 'playing up, playing fair and according to the rules' ethic, which was important to the rise of mens sana in corpore sano (a health mind in a healthy body) ideal of the Victorian public schools. In late nineteenth century England, the codification of games like cricket, soccer, rugby was a direct result...

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