There's a love-hate relationship between the the brits and the yanks - they each seem to be fascinated by some aspects of the culture and appalled by others. That's exacerbated in online situations where people just seem to forget politeness. As a brit, the unquestioning jingoism that get's indoctrinated into yanks from birth can get tiring after a while. I don't doubt that they find the brit's lack of any apparent patriotism just as strange. Those are sweeping generalisations but that's probably got something to do with it. Having your own forum where people actually speak the same lingo probably has something to do with it as well

My dad's been a cricket groundsman for over 30 years so every summer when I was a kid I'd 'help' him mark out the wicket. I'd be playing cricket (well we'd be playing with a beer crate for stumps, a bat, tennis ball and a jumper for the other end) until it got too dark to see the ball. Most kids don't live anywhere near a public cricket pitch whereas you can just wander down the local park with your mates with a ball, put two jumpers on the ground for posts and voila, one instant football game. At school you'd play football in the first term, rugby would get played in the middle term if your school was posh and then it'd be athletics (yank: track & field) for the summer term. Cricket is still seen as a posh man's game except amongst the ethnic minorities who've largely migrated from the West Indies, India and Pakistan.

Sorry if I've rambled on too much
Paul