Jane, Welcome to the site. Do spend a bit more time looking at the posts: I think you'll find that we are disappointed when the brits lose, but also excited when they win and always hopeful at the start of a tournament. I don't think you'll find there's anywhere else that you'll find people following the Brits to this level - getting excited about Jamie Feaver, Ken Skupski and Naomi Broady.

Would you rather the players were just ignored? Funny kind of a sport that.

As for too much time on our hands - you're probably right

Jane, I wonder how long you have been watching this board?
You should have seen that here very ardent fans of tennis express their views on many players who would otherwise go unnoticed, even to the extent of sitting up during the night watching a screen where only occasional scores are displayed - that is hardly negative approach to British tennis.
Contrary to your opinion you will find much support of British players here but indeed some criticism, the criticism is usally placed out of dissappointment rather than malice and indeed surely everyone has the right to criticise as well as show praise.
Do you know anywhere else where these lesser ranked players are followed with such deep interest? Would it be better for them to go unnoticed other than a few family and friends?
 

there's quite a few goy girls playing for Britain: not sure how many jewish ones...

I hate to say this but your comment sounds like it comes from someone who is completely partisan to tennis players. This is a sports website and forum, and the last time I looked the tennis players that feature on this websites were sportsman. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago in a post but as sportsmen and women they are open to criticism and as followers of the sports and in some cases i would call some of the people on here journalists of the sport, it gives people a right to comment on it. If someone criticises a player it is not catty, it is what it is, its a criticism of the players skill, attitude, commitment or general play.

Just because it may offend a certain players or players it shouldn't stop someone from giving their opinion on a match and if they want to come on the forum and defend themselves then we welcome having a discussion with them. We are always very grateful when players log in and give their opinions, in recent memory we have had contact from Jamie Baker, Hutchins, Fitzpatrick Daniel Evans. All of which we are grateful for their opinions and insight into tourny's and there matches. Very rarely do people come in a give an unfair opinion unduely criticising a player or his performance and when they do they are dealt with as they are not following the rules of the forum. You can always question our commitment but you cannot question our love for the the British Tennis game. As mentioned above you would be hard pushed to find a website discussing national players who are in the 1000's or even players who are unranked. You will be hard pushed to find a forum that focuses in as great a detail as ours does on womens and juniors tennis. Neither will you find a forum where so many members will stay up to find out 'livescore' results from some far off challenger that is playing at 3am GMT.

I will also think you find that generally we do support players, there are the odd players who we feel are undeserving of praise but then again as i mentioned before they are sportsmen and women who are open to criticism. We really do appreciate you coming onto the forum and giving your opinion but i have to say its severly misinformed, perhaps you need to have a greater look at yourself. If we obviously have to much time on our hands because we post on a forums about British Tennis, surely you have too much time on your hands if your posting about people who post on a forum about British Tennis.

-- Edited by XCW4EVA at 14:22, 2007-11-18

I think the people on this forum tend to take a very balanced view compared to some - e.g. the BBC forums seem to be almost entirely negative, while some forums (e.g. GBTG the last time I looked, which admittedly was quite a long time ago) seems to like the wrap the players they support in cotton wool, which isn't as bad as the BBC approach, but isn't that much more constructive either.

Sometimes some of us are over-optimistic (not that there's anything much wrong with that), sometimes over-pessimistic - usually immediately after following live scores until 3 am only for the Brit to lose from a winning position, which I'd argue is a natural reaction (that the players themselves probably have too) and comes from us caring rather than wanting to have a go at someone.

Sometimes it's just a case of trying to keep each other grounded in reality - I know I'm 'guilty' of that, but I don't think it's a bad thing else I wouldn't do it.

Example 1: it's a fact that we have gone down from 20 men in the top 500 to 8 (7 tomorrow, of whom just 5 are active) in just over 2 years and that all of the English players who were in the top 500 at the start of the year have dropped, in most cases significantly, since then. It frustrates us because we know that some of the players concerned (Boggo, Bloomers, etc) are so much better than this and how can we discuss what's gone wrong / how things could get better or properly celebrate when things get better (as we did when we hit the 20 mark in the first place) if we don't acknowledge the reality of the situation when things aren't so good?

Example 2: Ed Seator reached one Futures Final thanks to players retiring in both the QFs and the SFs (which could have been because he was beating them so easily rather than them being incapacitated, but I doubt that was true in both cases) and he's now going round the African Futures trying (unfortunately not that successfully) to pick up more points. I admire his dedication, tying to make the most out of whatever level of ability he's got, but I think it's fair to suggest that he might be a bit over-ranked compared to someone like Skupski who is ranked lower but seems (to me, anyway) far more likely to make it to the top 500 in the foreseeable future.

Finally, sometimes we just have a bit of fun. Naughty, naughty us!  One example would be following Dee/Lownsborough - but where else would they have been transformed into such famous (anti-)heros? No doubt because some of us are just miffed that we never thought of taking some time out to experience the tennis circuit despite getting thrashed every time!
 
As far as trying to have some fun is concerned, I'm guilty again as charged, but some of those rotten limericks of mine (which could be read as nasty if you are determined to do so, but are never meant to be) have found their way to the players (thanks to sheddie's annoying habit of dropping me in it! ) and have apparently gone down quite well, while I happen to know (to my great embarrassment! ) that one of them, even though it wasn't entirely complimentary, was pinned up on one of the players' walls by his mum to help cheer him up when he got home from the tournament he'd just got knocked out of. (though I've no idea if it helped and somehow I doubt it! )

If I was a GB player outside the top 200, I'd be really happy that people (especially some of the very dedicated people on here, who know who they are) were following my progress so closely and cared how my career went. Jamie Baker, for example, was clearly stunned at the love coming from the GB fans when he played his DC rubber and a virtually full house started chanting Ja-mie Ba-ker over and over again - I think he might have been amazed at how many people even knew his name in the first place!

-- Edited by steven at 15:55, 2007-11-18

-- Edited by steven at 15:57, 2007-11-18

Definite fishing/trolling going on here. I can't believe you guys even took time out to write such lengthy responses. For once, I think Jack is correct and has taken the correct approach in giving this moron very little time of day. How can we be the problem with British Tennis? Boards like this are probably the only bit of publicity British players playing in lowly Futures get. I bid you good day Mrs Voice and hope you never post here again.

-- Edited by john at 03:39, 2007-11-19