Sport
There are a number of sporting teams and players based in the borough. They include:
Football Fulham Football Club, Chelsea Football Club and Queens Park Rangers are all based in the borough and play Premier League football. The borough can therefore claim to be home to three of the top twenty teams in English football.
Footballers:
- Ex-Nottingham Forest, Newcastle United, West Ham United, Manchester City and England international defender Stuart Pearce was born in Shepherd's Bush.
- Much-travelled former Queens Park Rangers striker Marcus Bent was born in Hammersmith.
- Sean Davis plays currently for Bolton Wanderers and was capped for England under-21s, he is one of the few players in history to play for the same club in all 4 divisions of the English football league whilst at Fulham.
- Tony Bedeau of Torquay United and Walsall was born in Hammersmith in 1979.
- Queens Park Rangers midfielder Lee Cook was born in Hammersmith in 1982.
Rugby
Hammersmith & Fulham RFC have been playing in the borough at Hurlingham Park for over 30 years. They boast four senior men’s sides and one Ladies XV. The men’s 1st XV currently compete in London's NE2 League with the remainder of the sides participating in the Middlesex Merit Tables.
Tennis
The Queens Club.
Boxing
- Joe Calzaghe was born in Hammersmith in 1972.
- Frank Bruno was born in Hammersmith in 1961.
Rowing
Lower Mall was home to a large number of rowing clubs at the end of the 19th Century, of which there are now only a few survivors. The headquarters of the national governing body, the Amateur Rowing Association, is also on Lower Mall, in a building, The Priory, which used to be occupied by rowing clubs.
The first half of the Boat Race course is along Hammersmith and Fulham's southern border, on the River Thames.
Read more about this topic: London Borough Of Hammersmith And Fulham
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.
”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)