You may have gathered that this is not a football post... but I felt the need to congratulate the Canadian athletes that have qualified for not one but two World Cups!
Earlier this year the Canadian Cricket team qualified for the World Cup in 2011 to be held on the Asian subcontinent. The most impressive thing about the qualifying tournament was that our best player was injured early on and we managed to qualify without him. Canadian Cricket is definitely on the up.
Last week the Canadian Rugby team qualified for the World Cup to be held in 2011 in New Zealand. We qualified by beating the United States in Edmonton. We have been draw into a group with France, New Zealand, Tonga, and an Asian Qualifier. It will certainly be a challenge, but hopefully Canada can shock the world and make it out of the group. We do have the advantage of playing New Zealand last, if they have wrapped up the group by then we might have an easier time.
Two World Cups in 2011. Hopefully our Cricketers & Rugby players will inspire our footballers in their World Cup qualifying that will get underway in 2012, and then we can have another World Cup Qualification to celebrate!
In case you are interested: Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, and England & Wales*, are the only teams to play in the Football, Rugby, & Cricket World Cups. England has won the Football and Rugby World Cup and twice been the losing finalists in the Cricket World Cup. While Australia has won both the Rugby and Cricket World Cups it has failed to make the Football final.
* - England and Wales play together in Cricket.
2 comments:
Interesting little stat about the 6 countries that in the major events.
True sporting powers, that is what we are. For a country to play in three of the biggest sporting events in the world is indeed an achievement.
You dont see a World Cup NFL, do you???? I wonder why :)
I think that Australia & Ireland stand out as the most similar to Canada as none of these three sports are the main sport in any of these 3 nations. Ireland has Gaellic Football & Hurling, Australia has Aussie Rules, and Canada has Hockey (Ice hockey for those of you not in North America).
Adt - I would say that a "Gridiron World Cup" isn't terribly far away. They did have some success with NFL Europe in Spain & Germany which aren't Rugby markets, plus they are expanding into Japan & China. I would say that "Gridiron" has a lot of room for growth in countries that play baseball as they are already predisposed to American sports. I don't think we will see one in the next 5 years, but I would be surprised if there wasn't one in the next 50 years. If you would like some proof that the popularity is growing just look at SuperBru even they have an NFL pool.
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