Beyond the Grave wrote:
Don't the Irish know all that is going to do is make the All Blacks play better.
You want to talk fanaticism, let's go to high school sports. As some of you know I went to a Catholic school, we had a huge basketball rivalry with another Catholic school that was across the city. We dispise the other school, and they feel the same about us. We have had fights on the court and in the stands. It is a given that somewhere during the course of the game that there will be a fight somewhere in the gymnasium
...and I thought that only happened at the redneck high school I went to..
We had 2 or 3 big rivalries. The biggest one was kinda of strange. It was a basketball only rivalry. The football games were pretty peaceful. Most of the time, there would be Paintsville people at Prestonsburg parties and vice versa. For whatever reason, though, come basketball season, the friendship was gone. The were a couple of games where they only allowed players, coaches, and officials in the gym. At one point we were totally banned from playing each other except when we had to play each other in post season.
It was pretty bad. One year, I think almost everyone in the gym was either in a fight or trying to break up one. It was nuts.
Our other rivalries were usually just a war of words (and one rival, in particular, gave us toooo many chances to make fun of them). Granted, we went overboard, but it got into their heads, and, when you play angry, you don't play as well.