Sports Letter: Leagues ahead
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: How do you decide which is the best team sport in the world? To answer this question you need a way of measuring 'best'. To me for a sport to be termed best it needs to be exciting, entertaining, skilful and lots of action in it.
In ball sports the ball needs to be on the field of play in order for this to happen, so the ball has to be as I term it 'live' for the maximum entertainment.
To answer the original question, I took three major team sports - football, rugby union and rugby league - to see which was the best. To be able to do this I calculated the amount of time the ball was live in three televised matches: Oxford University v Cambridge University (RU), Inter Milan v Norwich City (Football) and St Helens v Warrington (RL). The respective percentages were 39 per cent, 59 per cent and 74 per cent.
This means that logically rugby league has the most chance of being exciting, entertaining, skilful and action packed, therefore rugby league could be said to be best team ball sport in the world.
Yours,
R J WOOD
Wakefield
17 March
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