Australia Archives - Sportsocratic

“Generosity” – Chris Anstey describes Luc Longley in a single word

May 14, 2020 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS Leave a Comment Filed Under: Ethics and Values

Australia has provided it's share of super-talented basketball centres to the NBA and WNBA (the world's premier basketball competitions). Aron Baines, Lauren Jackson, Andrew Bogut, Liz Cambage, Luc Longley and Chris Anstey are just some of the great Australian big men and women that spring to mind. Of the entire crop, Longley was the first. He started the ball rolling when he … [Read more...]

Super body surfing – The Master, Dix Ozier, discusses the why and how of the ancient art – Part 1.

May 10, 2020 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS Leave a Comment Filed Under: Coaching

Why should anyone want to learn to body surf? I mean really body surf. I mean its not a real sport like surfing is it? Isn't body surfing just playing around in the surf because you can't ride a board? True body surfing masters go into fits over such heresy! Such ignorance! Of course body surfing is a real sport. And it's a real form of surfing. The experts might even say its … [Read more...]

The most important statistic in sport

June 22, 2018 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment Filed Under: Research

What is the most important statistic in sport? Clearly, it’s the FU-TU ratio. Forget goals scored, assists, tackles, missed tackles, meters gained, passes completed, rebounds, efficiency rating and any one of a hundred other stats. None of them hold a candle to the FU-TU ratio. Every coach on the planet needs to seriously consider the FU-TU rating of every player on … [Read more...]

Netball – Australia versus Fiji

April 11, 2018 By SOCRATES NEWS DESK Leave a Comment Filed Under: News and comment

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Never cheated in my life!

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?

Sport and the question of ethics

November 13, 2020 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

“Come on. Get over it. Move on. It’s just a game!”

Most sports lovers have, at some stage of their sporting lives, experienced what they perceived to be a significant sporting injustice and had their complaints answered with just such a response. But is it “just a game?” Do injustices within the sporting realm have the potential to do real damage to individuals and to society. Socrates heard a story about a local sporting team who felt that they had been dudded by the organizers of their regional competition and he wondered whether their concerns about the perceived lack of fairness in their case and the potential consequences for all involved had any merit.

When Socrates heard former rugby referee and philosopher, Dr Simon Longstaff (Executive Director of The Ethics Centre), discussing the importance of ethics with great eloquence and passion on the radio he thought that he might be a good person to ask about whether ethics applies in sport and whether there are potential consequences for society when fair play in sport is sidestepped.

Simon was kind enough to agree to a chat. Click the pic to read the good stuff.

Aivi Luik interview – Matilda unsung hero

February 6, 2020 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

In pub discussions about the Australian women’s football team’s most remarkable player the name Aivi Luik is not often the first one to come up. Socrates thinks that this might be a mistake and that the value of this remarkable athlete might be under-recognized. Check out her record of achievment in almost every corner of the football world. USA, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia. MVP awards. Championships. All star team selections. She has had a remarkable career by anyone’s standards and is still playing at her best at 34! With Luik and her fellow Matildas in camp preparing for their Olympic Games qualifying series matches against China, Thailand and Taiwan this week Socrates was grateful that she found time to answer some questions about her footballing life. Press here for the Aivi Luik interview – a must for all sports fans, especially ambitious young athletes considering overseas careers.

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!

Priorities in times of Covid-19

April 14, 2020 By SOCRATES NEWS DESK Leave a Comment

Here is a story about a new kid in town who suddenly, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, has to worry about how she will survive. At the same time, sports celebrities implore “loyal fans” to keep supporting their clubs financially. This kid…. and millions of others (many of them new kids in town) just WANT THEIR MONEY BACK. They need it! The elite sports leaders and many average punters come from totally different worlds. When someone asks the ones without jobs about how important the survival of professional sports teams is, I doubt that they have even given it any thought. They have more important things on their minds.

“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!

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.