Socrates: Tell me Master, you are an internationally renowned philosopher and guru of football, I am sure that many of your fans would like to know what is your favourite aspect of the beautiful game of football? Laozi: Are, yes, Mr Socrates. That is a very wise question. My favourite aspect of the beautiful ancient game of football is “the pass”. Socrates: “The … [Read more...]
Michel de Montaigne on coaching sports
Sixteenth century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne would have been a great sports coach. In the twenty-first century world full of politicians, religious leaders, military people, celebrities, business tycoons, cultural experts, sports and coaching gurus who all seem to know, without question, the answers to all the world’s problems Michel would have been a stand out. … [Read more...]
Outstanding (but not well-known) sporting achievement
Lifelong surfer and former Manly (Sydney Northern Beaches) resident, Greg Mossop, is possibly the only surfer in the world who has dropped-in on two world champions on the one wave! He freely admits that many surfers can boast that they have dropped in on more than one world champion in their surfing lives, but it is the fact that he managed the feat on the one wave that makes … [Read more...]
The highs and lows of surfing Sunset Beach while competing at the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational
Rusty Miller has a surfing resume that very few surfers come even close to matching. He was the top ranked surfer in the USA in 1965, he was a four-time invitee to complete at the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational contest in Hawaii, he was one of the world’s most highly regarded big wave riders in the 60’s and he was reputed to be the first surfer to paddle out at the legendary Bali … [Read more...]
Forget technical genius. Great coaching is managing player expectations and emotions.
A while back I had the opportunity to teach a new activity to a soccer team at practice that I thought would be of great benefit to them. I had seen this particular “practice game” work miracles for other teams both in terms of the individual technical skills it helped to develop in participating players and in the effective teamwork it tended to facilitate. This activity had … [Read more...]