Sport
A number of professional sports teams are based in the South Island — with the major spectator sports of rugby union and cricket particularly well represented. The Crusaders and Highlanders represent the upper and lower South Island respectively in rugby union's Super Rugby competition; and Canterbury, Otago, Southland Stags, Tasman Makos all participate in provincial rugby's ITM Cup. At cricket, the South Island is represented by the Canterbury Wizards, Central Stags, and Otago Volts in the Plunket Shield, one day domestic series, and the HRV Twenty20 Cup.
As well as rugby union and cricket, the South Island also boasts representative teams in the domestic basketball, soccer, ice hockey, netball, and rugby league.
The North vs South match, sometimes known as the Interisland match was a longstanding rugby union fixture in New Zealand. The first game was played in 1897 and the last match was played in 1995.
Christchurch also hosted the 1974 Commonwealth Games. An unidentified group is promoting a bid for the South Island to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Read more about this topic: South Island, Culture
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“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)
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)