• Home
  • SOCRATES’ THINKING
    • News and comment
    • Editorial
  • About
  • US
    • Sportsocratic team
    • Contributors
  • Reviews
    • Adventures
    • Books
    • Places
  • Contributions
  • Advertise
  • Contact

Sportsocratic

Thoughts, ideas, opinions and postulations on sport and adventuring

  • Sport & society
    • Ethics & Values
    • History
    • Favourite photos
    • Cultural and social issues
    • Politics
    • Big questions
    • Sport fashion
      • Sartorialism and style
  • Wild sports
  • Silly stuff
  • Sports science
    • Research
    • Coaching
    • Innovation
    • HEALTH
  • The things that made me
  • Stories
    • General sporting stories
    • 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
      • Rabbit killer – a master takes a caning at pipeline!
  • 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.

Sumo

September 14, 2018 By J. F. Campbell Leave a Comment Filed Under: Places

I got off the train at Osaka and did not have the foggiest idea where to go. Or even in what direction to head. The jumble of busy streets and incomprehensible signs gave no indication.  Boasting a Japanese vocabulary that might have stretched to half-a-dozen words on a good day, I was steeling myself for the ignominy of approaching a perfect stranger and asking plaintively, … [Read more...]

What great sports writing does.

July 24, 2018 By J. F. Campbell Leave a Comment Filed Under: Books

“I hope you enjoy this, John! Fond regards, Judith.”  I’d been living in Connecticut for three months. New England, forested by trees of red, gold and amber foliage, was wrapped in Autumn’s melancholy. Back in Oz, the semi-finals of the footy season would be kicking off. I was homesick.  ‘Hooked on League,’ the autobiography of Penrith hooker Royce Simmons (co-written … [Read more...]

Cheers for the English team at the World Cup – not! Well… not from this little black duck.

July 9, 2018 By J. F. Campbell Leave a Comment Filed Under: Cultural and social issues

I was woken by my cat Portnoy at sparrow’s fart for his usual breakfast of Friskies and a stroll around his domain, after which he would retire to bed for the duration. Stumbling around in the pre-dawn cold and dark, it entered my head that I might switch on the tele and see what was happening in the World Cup. I arrived just as the nerve-wracking penalty shootout between … [Read more...]

Playing the game in the right spirit (whatever that means) – the fine art of cheating at cricket

June 27, 2018 By J. F. Campbell 2 Comments Filed Under: General sporting stories

Before he took a hammering at the hands of Terence Crawford in Las Vegas, Australia’s fleeting world welterweight champion, Jeff Horn, claimed that the scales had been doctored before his weigh-in for the bout. He needed to strip naked and then still lose another 8oz to get down to the 147 lb limit for his division. Given Crawford’s clear superiority in the ring, you’d have to … [Read more...]

Confessions of an addicted mungo – my love for League (and the Rabbitohs)

June 20, 2018 By J. F. Campbell 5 Comments Filed Under: History

We’ve all heard the joke about the good ol’ boy from Bumcrack, Alabama, who likes two kinds of music - country AND western. Well, I am similarly mono-cultural in my appreciation of footy.  Being born and bred in Sydney in that golden age before the AFL’s South Melbourne arrived in town to re-brand itself as the Swans (until they won the 2005 grand-final, whereupon coach … [Read more...]

Next Page »

Outstanding achievement

Outstanding (but not well-known) sporting achievement

September 19, 2019 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

Everyone has heard of Kelly Slater and his bucket load of world surfing titles. Michael Jordan and his multitude of NBA titles are pretty common knowledge too. Michael Schumacher’s six world driver’s championships are pretty well known as well. Here is a sporting achievement all three would be jealous of. Manly surfer Greg Mossop has a sporting achievement that these three champions could only dream of and Mossop believes that, with a bit of luck, he could have done even better!

SOCRATES’ RECENT TWEETS

Tweets by Sportsocratic

professionalism

Expectations on professional athletes – is it fair to expect pros to uphold certain values?

April 30, 2019 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

Can professional sportspeople be expected to uphold values above and beyond their obligation to play? How far should those obligations to uphold values extend? Is it okay for the Australian Rugby Union to expect players like Isael Folou to honour their stated value of “inclusiveness”? Socrates ponders these delecate issues and sets out his position.

wisdom

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

sport at mardi gras

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!

A life with horses

A life with horses – or Lulu in wonderland

August 8, 2018 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS Leave a Comment

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!

wisdom

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

Keith Miller

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!

sartorialism and style

Seven deadly sins of sports sartorialism and style.

April 17, 2019 By SOCRATES 2 Comments

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.

trivia

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.

Etymology

Where did the word canter come from?

August 8, 2018 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

A bit more horsey stuff for people who liked the story next door. Here is a cracker bit of etymology for all you word lovers (and horse lovers) out there. Where does the word canter come from? You’ll never guess in a million years! Click here to find out. It’s a beauty!

What does it mean?

What is Elvis leg?

Admit it. You’ve never heard of “Elvis leg,” have you? What the blazes is “Elvis leg?” As is the case with every other “What does it mean…” story we have ever posted, the answer is not directly related to the name itself. It is indirectly related to Elvis, though. Have a guess what the relationship is… then click here and check out whether your were correct. Find out for certain which sport uses this term and what it means.

What is a liberator?

Of course most you aviation buffs will think that a liberator is an American WW2 heavy bomber. Fair enough. But in a sporting context does it have a completely different meaning? Indeed it does. You are going to have to click here to find out what a liberator is and does in the world of sport.

Aphorisms, insights and wisdom

“The thing that’s depressing about tennis is that no matter how good I get I will never be as good as a wall.”

More perceptive sporting analysis from Mitch Hedberg, comic genius.

 

ebook

Phillip has returned to the south of India after eighteen years. But who is the young girl staying in his hotel? And what will he learn about his estranged brother through Inez, the Spanish backpacker?

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

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

©2019 Sportsocratic