 | Wooden spoon award: Encyclopedia II - Wooden spoon award - The wooden spoon in sport
Wooden spoon award - The wooden spoon in sport
Wooden spoon award - Rowing
"Spoons" are also awarded to Cambridge college rowing crews who go down four places in a Bumps race, something usually to be avoided. In theory, such a crew is allowed to paint a wooden spoon in their club colours and write their names on it as a trophy of their "achievement": this is rarely done but occasionally done by the less serious "beer boats" in the May (summer) Races.
Wooden spoon award - Rugby Union
How the Cambridge wooden spoon idea came to be used in Rugby union is not exactly known, but in the early years of the Six Nations Championship there were many Cambridge graduates playing, so they may have attempted to preserve the concept after the last one was awarded in 1909. It is certain in any case that the tradition first arose in Cambridge and rugby adopted and perpetuated the tradition.
Nowadays the term, "wooden spoon", is used to denote the last-placed nation in the Rugby Union Six Nations Championship held every year between England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. No physical wooden spoon exists or has ever existed in the case of rugby, however.
Wooden spoon award - Australian and New Zealand sports
The term is commonly used in Australian and New Zealand sporting competitions, most notably in the major football leagues (such as the NRL, NPC, and the AFL) to refer to the club positioned last on the league table at the end of a season.
In a 2005 AFL game, Jeff Corfe, known as "Joffa", brought in an oversized wooden spoon into the ground at a game between his side Collingwood, against fellow wooden spoon contenders Carlton. Joffa planned to bring this spoon out when it looked like Carlton were going to lose the match. Unfortunately, this plan backfired, and Carlton were comfortable winners (although they still did win the wooden spoon in 2005!)
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The wooden spoon in sport", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
