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    • Waves of Pain
      • No Respect!
      • Death Wish at Fairy Bower
      • Fried nuts
      • The ocean is a trickster… especially Hawaii’s North Shore – Gas chambers bites the unwary!
      • Titus Kinimaka’s nightmare Christmas
      • Dix dumped – the trials of a self-confessed elite body surfer
      • The little surf that nearly ruined a promising career…
      • Rabbit killer – a master takes a caning at pipeline!
      • Death Wish at Fairy Bower
      • Easternmost memory – surfing in the wild at the end of the continent
      • Nothing ruins a good surf like a couple of blokes with automatic assault rifles…
      • Agony for Miki Dora
      • Smashed at Gas Chambers
      • Who was Europe’s first surfing woman? Introducing the wonderful Witch of Newbury.
      • A bad day at Palmy – surfies and clubbies at war!
      • When being a proven waterman is not enough!
      • The highs and lows of surfing Sunset Beach while competing at the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational
      • An American midnight surf – that goes very wrong!
  • What does it mean?
    • What is a snake?
    • What does “shag” mean?
    • What does “Freddy Jones” mean?
    • What does “hook and ladder” mean?
    • What does back walk-over mean?
  • Philosophers Sport Bar
    • Socrates and Aristotle debate football defence
    • Michel de Montaigne on coaching sports
    • Ancient philosophers discuss what makes the beautiful game beautiful! Laozi and Socrates get technical.

Not everyone is worth listening to 3.

September 18, 2016 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment Filed Under: Editorial, SOCRATES' THINKING

Our thoughtful leader
I have lots to say this issue… worthwhile or not

Welcome. I hope all you are prepared for a change in editorial policy. A change for the better in terms of providing you guys with interesting, up to the minute, reading that is. This issue took ages to get together. It missed one or two deadlines so to speak. It has some pretty good content I reckon, but there is still more great stuff to come. So there is the change. I’ve decided to let fly with a new edition every month but as exciting new material becomes available, I will update each issue continuously with new stories that have emerged from the intellectual sporting ether. That means less waiting for you between issues and more up to date content. So, by the time you have read all you want to read in a new posting, by gum, I assume I will have something new up there to whet your grey matter’s whistle.

That is my round-about way of letting you guys know that you should keep your eyes open, later in the week, for some more fantastic content. Mandy Nolan, one of Byron Bay’s most gifted exports, shares her experience as a parental good behaviour enforcer at kids soccer. Jack Marshall explains why yoga may not meet everyone’s definition of sport but it can potentially play a critical role in our lives. Tim Willcox mystifies us with some of his most recent postulations about why certain things in sport are as they are. Then… early next week… all those who have been patiently waiting for the “Secret Dads” second installment will get their wish. Can’t wait for that!

Mandy had a bad day at the sports field
Mandy had a bad day at the sports field

In this posting we feature a review of a book by William Finnegan called Barbarian Days. While book reviews might not normally be the stuff of feature stories the fact that not much great literature has ever come out of surfing and that this bloke has cracked it for the Pulitzer Prize for biography, makes this particular book is an interesting piece of sports news. You may well consider this book a cracker. A must read for surfer and non-surfer alike. You may not, too. Read my review to find out what I mean.

Spirituality creeps into this issue at the heart of a number of stories. Yoga guru Eoin Finn’s commitment to nature and the ocean and Jean-Christophe Rufin’s challenging stroll on the Camino de Santiago certainly raise important “heart” issues to sit beside their physical pursuits.

Jack Marshall
Jack Marshall

Don’t miss my confessions about my first steps (or pedals, I suppose) as a biking enthusiast. If Sportsocratic.com achieves one thing throughout its existence may it be that if offers non-elite athletes the chance to share their experiences. My biking exploits fit into this category.

I would be interested in hearing what readers think about my comments in relations to the pay disparity between male and female television sports journalists and the expressed reasons for the disparity. Do you agree that sometimes it seems that 2016 business executives are still living in the 1970s?

 

SOCRATES

Short, fat, slow, uncoordinated and clumsy, ancient Athenian Socrates had very few of the physical quality required of the elite athlete. He did have, on the other hand, a better than average brain between his ears and a mouth that could talk opposing players, referees and coaches half into their graves. Socrates, as a sport analyst, is what the world needs and misses. He is an opinionated so-and-so that actually thinks deeply about sport and adventuring and likes nothing better than provoking others into deep thought. Socrates is the antithesis of the sporting jock or the West Sydney soccer supporter.

Support Sportsocratic

Thanks for reading this story! We appreciate your visit to Sportsocratic… and love providing alternative information, opinions and angles from the sporting world. The world of sport is so full of the same old stuff from the same old sources that it drives us nuts… and it makes our day giving voice to less orthodox views. If you appreciate our free service, give some thought to helping us out. It costs us big bucks to keep Sportsocratic going but, if our readers support us, our future is much more secure.

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“Bill” could have been a great rugby player… but he was more interested in other things. Do people display characteristics of their personal and working lives through their performances on the sporting field? Socrates describes the sporting life of one of his favorite people, and shows how the skill and character of one of Australia’s best journalists was always on show, even as a young man, whether on the rugby field, the basketball court or even on a quiet country headland when threatened with fisticuff by a big bloke wearing a blue uniform. Get “Bill’s” story here. Click the pic!

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There were many great moments in the final Wallabies versus France rugby test last week but according to Socrates, one stood our far above all the others. Was it a great try? A brilliant tackle? A perfect scrum or line-out? A fantastic bit of work at the break-down? According to the rotund Greek hooker it was none of those things. He reckons that the highlight of the game was a much quieter, simpler and more subdued moment. A moment that might have escaped the attention of millions of spectators. Find out about Socrates favorite moment of the test. Click the pic.

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November 19, 2020 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

What is cheating? Is cheating a black and white moral issue… or are there shades of gray. Socrates spent twenty years in the engine room of the beautiful game of rugby… the scrum. He loved being a rugby hooker. He reckons that being slap bang in the middle of sixteen enormous, sweating blokes desperate to secure possession of the ball for their team taught him quite a bit about the fine art of cheating… what it is… and what it isn’t…. and how it can be done. Here Socrates lifts the veil on aspects of the workings of the 1970’s and 80’s amateur rugby scrum revealing some of its secrets. In so doing he shows that cheating is not a simple moral issue. he also claims to haver never deliberately cheated. Do you believe him?

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Just six words…

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Have you ever wished that you could meet and have a conversation with someone you idolize? What would you say to your idol to convince them to want to stay in the conversation? What would they say in response to your brilliant social skills? How would the conversation go? How would it leave you feeling? An Australian ex-professional athlete who had played with and against some of the greatest basketball talent that this country has ever seen (Andrew Gaze, Ricky Grace, Shane Heal, Phil Smythe) once, by chance, had a meeting with possibly the greatest and most famous professional sports person that has ever lived. The superstar he bumped into, in a New York elevator, just happened to be the Aussie basketballer’s idol. How did the meeting turn out? Click the pic and discover the six most memorable words in this Australian point guard’s life.

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RITUAL: BEING CHAIRED UP THE BEACH

September 13, 2022 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

Why do we subject professional athletes to embarrassing and cumbersome rituals at times when they should be celebrating. Why do athletes agree to participate in rituals that make them look like nongs? Chas Smith makes the argument for banning the post-contest victory chair-up-the-beach. Click the pic to get Chas’ important advice to the world of contest surfing.

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To smash or be skillful? Can good defense be coached or are accidents like the Latrell Mitchell and Joey Manu incident inevitable?

August 31, 2021 By SOCRATES NEWS DESK Leave a Comment

In a tough body contact sport are occasional horrible accidents inevitable? Possibly. But probably not with the frequency that many former elite players and expert analysts argue. Socrates believes that good coaching and hard work from highly skilled players can prevent many potentially dangerous tackles and that accepting the horror accidents as inevitable and high level skills as “uncoachable” sells athletes, professional sports and coaches short. Get the story here. Click the pic.

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Its just a job. Grass grows. Birds fly. Waves pound the sand. I beat people up. – Muhammad Ali

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Athletes in the LGBTQI Mardi Gras

March 12, 2019 By SOCRATES 2 Comments

Twenty-one different sports teams marched in this years Sydney Mardi Gras. That’s twenty-one groups of out and proud queer athletes. The LGBTQI community need to be “fearless” and queer athletes are no exception. Check out these fearless sporting clubs living it up on their night of night!

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A life with horses – or Lulu in wonderland

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It’s well known that playing sport can be a life-changing experience. For one mum, adventurer and businessperson, having a sporty pastime was more than life-changing. Lulu’s friendship with her horses has touched her and her daughter’s lives in a million ways and created a whole new life in an ever-changing wonderland for them both. But don’t think for a moment that their horses are the purpose built catalysts for their ideal lives! Its way more complex than that… and more respectful. Read on! It’s worth it!

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“Pressure? Pressure is a Messerschmidt up your arse. Playing cricket is not!”

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One of the greatest cricket “all-rounders” of all time, Keith Miller was not only an exceptional performer in multiple elements of test cricketing (batting, bowling and fielding) but he was also gifted in numerous other aspects of his life. Witty, entertaining, handsome, a renowned war time pilot and gifted Australian Rules Footballer, Miller was famed for calling a spade a spade and acknowledging that there was much more to life than elite sports. Having flown fighter bombers in the Second World War under life threatening circumstances he was not one to take the “pressure” of high level sport too seriously!

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Here is a cracker of a trivia question.

Who was the college recruiting scout talking about when he said the following to his head coach.

“I’ve just seen a fat guy… who can play like the wind!”

Yup. The same guy who told people that just because they had shoes like his, it didn’t make them like him in any other way. Charles Wade Barkley.

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To buy The Bangalore Test, John Campbell’s new ebook novella, just click the link.

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