But if rugby players can cope with the demands associated with long distance travelling year on year, the surely our players can to.
The Football v Rugby debate is a bit of a red herring. Different sports require different aerobic/anaerobic requirements and different strength requirements. These will vary from position to position - more so in rugby because the physical requirements of a prop forward are at the opposite spectrum to that of a speedy winger. Having said that, I have seen Garin Jenkins run round Morfa Stadium and he had extraordinary aerobic capacity - for a big chap!
We also have more possessions in games, so we dictate pace and play, it's not as if we are on the receiving end every game and only see 30% of the ball and a running our balls off trying to get it.
Tennis is more demanding in my opinion than most sports and it can go on for 5 sets lasting hours and they will still have to come out and play the next day or in some cases the same day if they are in the doubles. Rugby is far more demanding than football will ever be, It always have and always will be. footballers are pampered to much and should easily play two games in three days....Remember when we were kids using coats as goalposts and we would play for 4 or 5 hours a game with no ref,no lines man, no subs... those were fun days, It could go dark and we would still carry on under street lamps...did we complain...NO... these footballers don't know how lucky they are.....and half of us had to play in wellington boots as our parents could not afford football togs..
You sure that wasn't Gethin Jenkins? That man is a one off freak of nature. By all accounts he beat most of the backs in endurance running while at his peak a few years ago.
Bloody hell Dai, tennis is a great example. These are truly supermen and Nadal, Federer, Murray, Djokvick etc regularly end up playing in matches against each other for 4-5 hours and do it all the following day again.
Boxing is by far the most physically demanding sport. It combines the physical contact of rugby with the cardiovascular demands of the likes of football and tennis.
Yea but we don't make 11 changes from Europe to league, we make 4 or so!!! We can't financially buy two squads that can compete in the league! We're not a squad built for European competitions year after year.
We are talking about Premership Football. Elite athletes. A drop in performance of 3-4% is critical and is the difference between winning and losing. In fact the difference physically between teams can be minimal - hence the playing of mind games before matches because that can have an enormous influence between teams of equal ability, which is why Fergie took it so seriously. ANY advantage is critical - so a team playing twice a week will be at a disadvantage to a team playing once a week. Mourinho has been talking about it this week and the effect it had on Chelseas training compared to Liverpool!
So are you telling me that a footballer is running for a full ninth minutes? They also get to sit down theme selves for 15 minutes too don't forget
Boxing is a hard sport, i know i did it...the training is so demanding you cant explain it, Its more demanding than the actual fight and you use every part of your body including your mental strength. A hard sport to take up if you don't have the determination and willpower to succeed...
I'd have loved to see the training regime that Ricky Hatton would have gone through to get chiseled when you consider how much weight he put on between fights, especially when he was at light welterweight. His training must have been brutal.
No - I didn't sat that. Neither would I say that a tennis player is fitter than a footballer (or vice versa). Every sport has different training and physiological requirements. Comparing Andy Murray with Robin van Persie is futile. The one thing they do have in common is that they are both elite athletes - trained to be at the top of their sports. But that is all they have in common - they are two different animals (in a sporting sense)
Most footballers average 2.8 miles during the game where some of the midfielders can average around 4 to 6 miles during a game and over 90 minutes that is good going and very demanding and you find that in the bigger squads it is these players who are mostly rotated by the manager.
