The 2,318,140 That Got Away

Idiots.

What is a participation sport anyway?

Are there sports that you do not participate in?

I'll second that...

sounds to me like someone ignored, or was unaware of, a great piece of solid data from the EA as to how many anglers there are! Either way a certain forehead-slapping Homer Simpson phrase comes to mind.

Another good example of joined up government... someone email this to Mr. Hislop at Private Eye, they love this kind of thing!

Jonny, NUBA has asked Sport England a few questions about there figures.

CLICK HERE to read more ;-)

Are there sports that you do not participate in?

Spectator sports, because you could say cricket is popular with a zillion fans, but only a small proportion play the game.

NUBA should have our strongest support for having asked such excellent questions. Anyone who hasn't read what Alan Suttie asked (linked above by Ian Cloke) should do so, and understand just how influential this MORI rubbish could be, and thus damaging.

There are more people playing cricket every month than fishing? It's just total garbage.

Good thread.

Alan Suttie will be at the NEC Go Fishing show this weekend, promoting NUBA, so if you have any questions you would like to put to him directly, you can do so there in public.

As Mark says, NUBA deserves our support, so get on their site and join;-)

Cricket is considered a sport? Isn't that like tennis, few spots of rain and it's all called off?? it's as near to being a sport as curling, which is basically who can use a brush on ice...someone needs to carry out a more accurate survey as those figues just don't reflect the truth.

Ive just been down the lake and there was ten people there ,I asked each one if they had been angling in the last 4 weeks and 9 said yes ,could you work out the figures for me please...........

I just read that page of Q&A's. I cant believe it, how blatantly obvious is it that Fishing is more popular that 281,000 per year. Really gets me frustarted that!

"Spectator sport"

Is that an oxymoron?

I also do not believe that walking can be classed as a sport. Not unless you are walking over a mountain, not just walking the dog. I can imagine the answer to the question, "have you taken part in an activity over the past 4 weeks" (whatever the question is!), being, "well I walk the dog every other night", and then the person conducting the survey saying "that will do".

These results cannot be reliable.

i want to know what the people who havent walked in the last 4 weeks have been doing?

mmm why dont we do our own survey on how many anglers there are ? The front door of the NEC this weekend might be a good place to start. Or how many fishing licences are sold then add on a few million for the sea anglers who dont need a licence

A badly worded survey for sure.

Of the 2.6 million rod licenses issued, do we know if this includes those who need to buy two, because they fish more than two rods?

Cakey = 90% ;0)

Two very important questions were missed out.

how many anglers do not class fishing as a sport, but as a hobby/pasttime?

and were the people being questioned aware that the questions also referred to fishing?

Fundamentally flawed methodology it would seem, in that few of those questioned would have contemplated fishing as either a sport or physical recreational activity and would not have mentioned it even if they had been on the bankside for the whole 4 weeks.

I do believe however that we as a sport have taken far too much comfort in our alleged popularity. If this survey has any benefit it will be to force us to look at the true number of anglers again.

This is actually quite serious. It potentially affects a great deal of things.

Such as consideration for national lottery money allocations - there are plenty of fisheries that could do with enhanced facilities for disabled access for instance that simply won't get considered for them if there are 'only' 280K anglers.

All sorts of other areas of concern potentially come to mind, such as local authority planning decisions (filling in ponds to build houses for example), river clearing, dredging and drainage - why bother troubling with anglers interests if hardly anyone is interested ? - water abstraction - ditto - The issue of the use and navigation in the Broads... the merits of issuing cormorant shooting licences, etc etc etc etc. Sure you can all come up with another half dozen if you think about it.

Plus the risk that some of the bright spark politicians who enjoyed attacking hunting with hounds as a matter of class war - if it weren't for the perception of the sport as toffs in red jackets would it ever have been banned ? I think not... - but who wouldn't dream of attacking a sport with nearly 3 million supporters will think quite differently if they perceive angling as another minority easy target.

One thing I learned as a lawyer when in practice is that if a lie is left unchallenged and repeated and repeated often enough then it will eventually be believed by even those who should know better and acted upon as if it were the truth.

There must be some ability to challenge this erroneous finding, as angling is certainly an interested party in the effect of application of those results. If it were the RSPB faced with a similar duff finding about bird then you can bet there would be national protests and MP's asking questions in parliament in pretty short order. But Angling.... with no effective unified and single equivalent representative charity we're stuffed.

(And this is not meant as a dig at the likes of the ACA etc, but they and all of our other bodies have a nasty tendency to be staffed by well meaning good old fashioned british amateurs and / or fragmented into small sectarian interests..... with no real media savvy or conception of how to go about generating real pr).

[Edit]though having gone on to read the NUBA Q&A's they at least see the dangers. But what publicity or pr has followed ? None. I only know about this from reading this post in a single posting on a personal interest website, ie. here.... Not splashed all over MSN news or the inside sporting pages of any newspaper. PR is the name of the game in this modern world if we want to hang on to our sport, let alone enhance its facilities and position. And our PR as anglers is woeful....[/Edit]

yeah... what he said..

I wouldn't trust any poll carried out by Mori.

I received one a few weeks ago asking about doctors surgeries and their response to emergency and other requests to see a doctor, presumably it too "was fully piloted and tested for reliability".

Cr*p! It asked if I'd needed an emergency appointment - yes. It then asked if I got seen within two days - no. And that was it. Never asked what the hell I did about my situation as if they just didn't give a damn.

The rest of it concerned itself with what race I was and where I came from, what sex (not that I have any), and age.

So if that's an example of "reliability" I'm a Dutchman's Uncle.

Just had a further read of Sport England's responses and couldn't help but notice their penultimate statement - "According to the survey (which surveyed adults aged 16 and over), 0.7 per cent (or 281,083) had taken part in fishing at least once in the last four weeks."

I believe the faulty findings lie in the question asking about the "last four weeks". Lets face it, the rivers (down here at least) are in a terrible state and have been so since last November and what with many small lakes suffering from cold water downpours this must have put off a lot of anglers from going fishing at all in this period.

Then again it could have been an even worse result and wouldn't have surprised me if they'd have asked the exact same question of these anglers in May - at the height of the close season!