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Bangor University(威尔士班戈大学)
所在地区:威尔士所在城市:BangorTIMES排名:56
一键免费快速申请文章正文综述详细专业照片新闻校友录已获Offer学生资料Are the Welsh obsessed with rugby? This is the topic of a lecture to be delivered in Nantes, France this week (27.9.07), Professor Duncan Tanner, a historian from Bangor University.Are the Welsh obsessed with rugby? This is the topic of a lecture to be delivered in Nantes, France this week (27.9.07), Professor Duncan Tanner, a historian from Bangor University.
Professor Tanner's timely analysis dispells a series of myths about Welsh rugby. 'On a typical Saturday afternoon in winter', he says, 'you'd find more Welshmen out walking, playing football and even more playing golf than you'd find playing rugby.' 'Three times as many people turn up to watch Cardiff play football than go to watch Newport-Gwent Dragons play rugby. In a really rugby-mad country like New Zealand, more than twice as many men play rugby, whilst the women's game is also much more popular,' he notes.
The difference comes with international matches, spectacles which that many more Welsh people follow and watch. 'Opinion polls tell us that people see rugby as part of being Welsh: it is part of our heritage, something where we have succeeded as a people, something which allows us to express our pride in the nation. Indeed, more people express pride in rugby than in the Welsh language, Welsh music and anything else apart from the Welsh environment'.
His paper suggests that because of past success - and because rugby is so much more than a game - our expectations of success are unrealistic given the size of our playing population. 'If we play the 'Welsh way' and lose against one of the top teams, then stoical Welsh fans will have a few beers and look to the new season; if we lose to a smaller nation, or look inept, the media will be sharpening their knives,' he says.
Professor Duncan Tanner is a modern and contemporary historian at Bangor University and director of the University's Welsh Institute for Social and Cultural Affairs. His interest in modern Welsh history includes work on Welsh devolution, Welsh identity and Welsh language policy. The paper, 'The Importance of Rugby in Wales', will be delivered at the Franco-British Cultural Centre in Nantes on 27 September.
