Some of the world’s best sporting strategies can come from the smallest leagues and least famous characters! A few years back, a wily small-town country rugby league back-rower had an amazing suggestion for his famous coach, Rugby League legend, Ian Martin. Click hear to find out what Martin thought of his idea. But how did super coach Jack Gibson find out about this big bloke’s secret strategy?
Philosophers sports bar
Socrates and Aristotle debate football defence
There is nothing more entertaining than two Greeks discussing a soccer match. Aristotle gives Socrates a lesson on how his principle of the Golden Mean applies to football defence as much as it does to everyday life. Could this be a sound lesson for the Tildas or should ancient Greek philosophers mind their own business?
who is this kid?
The Sporting Life of Albo
This good looking young bloke was a handy rugby league half back and a cracker fielder on the cricket oval (though he couldn’t bat or bowl to save himself). He also had a pretty handy back hand in tennis. The handy back-hand he still has! Anthony “Albo” Albanese may be a sports tragic who would still love to win a competition or two but he knows that sport has more going for it than the buzz you might get out of winning the next match. Great sport is about great community thinks Albo!
Waves of Pain!
Nothing ruins a good surf like a couple of blokes with automatic assault rifles…
A bad day in the surf normally means a nasty wipeout, a broken board, an argument with a thug, an injury like a cut or a broken bone or a selfish drop-in. In all your worst nightmares could you imagine a bad day in the surf involving blokes with automatic weapons turning up, just when the waves are good, to drag you away or worse? Thats what happenned to one surfer. She has had plenty of dodgy surf days along with thousands of cracker ones but this one takes the cake.
The highs and lows of surfing Sunset Beach while competing at the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational
Big wave surfing legend, Rusty Miller, believes that you don’t have to dig very far into a surfing disaster to discover a silver lining. Here is the story of his horror exit from the 1967 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational contest and why he was okay with it!
technical football
Forget technical genius. Great coaching is managing player expectations and emotions.
It broke his heart when his soccer team told Coach Socrates that his brilliant new activity was crap. For a while he thought his team were idiots. Eventually he realized coaching is much more than just technical expertise, brilliant strategy and fantastic activities and that maybe he had a bit to learn about getting the best performance out of his team. Find out what great coaches do here!
sports style – or lack of it!
Seven deadly sins of sports sartorialism and style.
There are hundreds of fashion choices that look ridiculous, foolish, horrible and offensive in a sporting context but seven particular style choices brand the “sinner” almost beyond redemption. Socrates smugly sticks his massive nose in the air and points the finger of sartorial disgrace at the “sins” he finds most hideous.
hokkaido adventuring
Life of adventure – John Morrell
Have you ever thought about living a life of adventure? Of buggering off to another land with a different culture, language and entire way of life and never coming back? That’s what John Morrell did decades ago. He went for a short visit… and never came back. If you went to Hokkaido too maybe you would do the same. Find out why John and his family are still loving the aspirin snow. Get his story in his chat with Socrates right here!
Crazy communities
Ten of the coolest and craziest communities that surf!
Everyone knows that Australians, Americans and Hawaiians are surfing nutters. You don’t have to be a genius to know that surfing is pretty popular in Brazil, France and Spain too. Here Socrates side-steps the well-known surfing communities and shines a spot-light on people you never knew surfed. What are the strangest surfing communities in the world? Socrates points out ten of the craziest and coolest. Would you believe the Swiss love to surf? You better! Find out about Swiss surfing right here and nine other mad surfing communities.
Wisdom
“Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the centre of the city.”
Oscar Wilde
While I appreciate Oscar’s humour, I gotta say he is being a bit harsh. There are a few rugby players who are not bullies!
A sports lover who starts late!
Still on the wing… (a life of music and rugby)
What happens when you take an old bloke (a musician) who has never played a game of rugby in his life and you stick him on the wing and send him out to play. Magic happens! That’s what!
School soccer is serious business
Primary school soccer competitions may start out as a bit of slap and giggle but win a few games and it starts to get serious. Or at least it does for the one or two girls who break their backs to help their less experienced team-mates along the journey. Read the story about one pair of star players who helped their team make it to the upper realms of their State Knockout competition then thought that it might be time for a team talk!
wisdom
“These are my new shoes. They’re good shoes. They won’t make you rich like me. They won’t make you rebound like me. They definitely won’t make you handsome like me. They’ll only make you have shoes like me.”
Who else but the incomparable Sir Charles “Round Mound of Rebound” Wade Barkley.
rough and risky play
“The Magic Pudding” – a guide to what kids love and how risky play helps create young athetes
Kids aren’t into fantasy fiction! They just love fighting, eating themselves silly and giving the rude finger to authority. So thought artist and novelist Norman Lindsay, and it inspired him to write the children’s classic, “The Magic Pudding.” With sports physiologists arguing that helicopter parenting (kids being barred from playing rough and risky games by risk-averse parents) prevents kids from developing higher level athletic skills I thought it might be a good idea to look at what this Magic Pudding thing might be able to teach our kids. Even if you don’t like the values it represents, its still a bloody funny read!
aphorisms, insights and wisdom… about fishing!
“You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.”
Brilliant and unorthodox American comedian, Mitch Hedberg, who like so many other comic geniuses, died way too young.
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