The Rugby Union World Cup kicked off at the weekend, this time in JAPAN of all places!!!!! JAPAN, you mean the country of martial arts, sumo wrestling and Karaoke – I suppose it could be considered a sport if the you have to listen to ‘bad singers’ over a longer period of time.
Yep, just browse the website www.rugbyworldcup.com and you’d be amazed which countries send teams to the world cup, aside from the usual British and Commonwealth teams. Titbit: Did you know that Germany also has a national team?
You know my mission by now – give you the tools to talk to natives with confidence, ease, and ready to impress! Sports as I always preach is a great ‘small talking topic’, which you don’t necessarily have to know all that much about to get into conversation – especially if you are smart and ask ALL the questions and listen.
Of course, it sounds very clichéd but MEN talk about sport, a lot! So get them talking (ladies too) with a very simply opener – “I’ve heard the Rugby World Cup just started in Japan”. You could get “Oh yes, don’t remind me, you can’t get away from it – not into it myself, I’m more into …………… (fill in the gap)” If the person doesn’t tell you what he/she likes then strike while the iron is hot and ask “So what are you into?”.
Quite often you’ll get “Oh yes, I love watching the rugby ….” Now all you have to do is make the right (conversational) noises, be interested, ask follow-up questions and let him/her speak and you will be his/her best friend.
If you want to find out more about the beautiful sport, just download the free PDF World of Sports Videos: https://teatimetitbits.de/download/sports-around-the-world-videos/
and follow the links to watch videos about Rugby.
Last Titbit today: Did you know that there are two types of Rugby? League and Union. The world cup is the Union version!
Have a great start to the week.
aside from (neben), ease (locker), to preach (predigen), to sound clichéd (formelhaft klingen), “don’t remind me” = “don’t get me started (Hör bloß damit auf), to strike while the iron is hot (das Eisen schmieden, solange es heiß ist)
As Heidelberg is one of the few important German rugby centres I’m well aware of the Rugby World Cup. In Japan… yeah… no emotive „Rudelgucken“ in the pub around the corner, at least at the weekend in combination with an very early morning pint as matches start at around 7 am our time. The fun of watching gets lost a bit. Nevertheless it’s a great sport.
My brother has played rugby since primary school. Thus I’ve spent lots of time at rugby fields. I even know some players of our national team personally (even went to school with some, shared the same classroom) and one member of the women’s national team lives in the apartment above mine.
It’s sad that Germany doesn’t take part in the games in Japan but I know the story behind that too well and that’s why it’s the logical consequence that we have to stay at home. German rugby players are no professional players (that means they are not payed for playing like other nations) which makes it hard to find enough guys that have a full time job and are still willing to invest time (and money) to train hard enough for being able to compete with England, New Zealand etc. Sponsoring is a big problem as there is almost none and so on. Lots of issues to be solved… maybe we’ll see us at the next World Cup.
BTW: There’s even more sports ahead as the World Athletics Championships start in Doha this Friday. 🙂
Jenny, it’s a shame Rugby isn’t so popular in Germany cos in my view it’s a far better sport than football, but as it gets no coverage in Germany, it’s never going to take off. I’m doing my bit to spread the word and increase awareness and even excited about the Sport.