Many “Waves of Pain” stories are about merciless thrashing handed out by the ocean when it’s in an angry mood. Not all. Some come from a wholly different kind of pain. I remember thinking, oh… what a load of bullshit, the first time I heard the expression “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” To me, an emotional beating has always been way worse … [Read more...]
School soccer is serious business
A few years back a tiny North Coast NSW town’s primary school girls’ soccer team surprised their parents, teachers and class-mates when they won their game in the first round of the NSW schools state knockout competition. The team was made up of two highly experienced, top notch players, a few hackers from the town’s club soccer team and a dozen or so kids who didn’t know the … [Read more...]
Fairy Bower monsters surf-boat crew! True story from the horses mouth!
On Sunday the 22nd of March 1966, the crew of the Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Club surf-boat, “Cabbage Tree I” rowed from the calm safety of Shelly Beach at Manly a few hundred meters out and just around the corner into the twenty foot plus waves that were breaking at Fairy Bower on that day. I have written about the event before. But here we have one of the … [Read more...]
Surf or golf? Nah. Neither. Should have stuck by the pool.
A bloke I know was taking a quick holiday at a luxury golf resort that just happened to own its own private beach rimmed with an outer reef that had pretty good waves. Ninety-nine percent of the guests at the hotel were golf nutters (and the beach was off-limits to non-guests), so my mate, Grunter, figured that a quiet paddle with no-one else to nick any of the best waves might … [Read more...]
Playing the game in the right spirit (whatever that means) – the fine art of cheating at cricket
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...]