Hokkaido Archives - Sportsocratic

Life of adventure – John Morrell

April 9, 2019 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS Leave a Comment Filed Under: Adventures

Professional adventurer, John Morrell, talks to Socrates about how he came to the Japanese wonderland of Hokkaido for a flying visit... and never left! He explains how he and has family made a life leading hardy and adventurous souls on the experience of their lives in this land of snow, mountains, volcanos and bears! Hokkaido gets more than its fair share of snow. The … [Read more...]

Ten of the coolest and craziest communities that surf!

February 26, 2019 By SOCRATES 2 Comments Filed Under: Places, Reviews

10 – The Swiss Who knew that the Swiss surf? They do! Swiss junior surf team. The Swiss take their surfing very seriously! Switzerland doesn’t even have a sea… let alone an ocean. Switzerland is completely landlocked. It’s not the kind of place one would expect to produce a fired-up surfing community! The Swiss, as a rule, locate their annual national surfing … [Read more...]

Furano – a beautiful and inexpensive Hokkaido ski resort

May 16, 2016 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment Filed Under: Places, Reviews

My daughter and I have skied and snow-boarded in the central Hokkaido town of Furano twice now. I thought it would be a useful addition to this first edition of Sportsocratic to briefly review our adventures there. Depending on what you are looking for in a ski holiday Furano may just be one of the best snow adventure holidays you will find anywhere in the world. One thing … [Read more...]

Their sporting life – A journalist’s story

April 7, 2021 By SOCRATES Leave a Comment

“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!

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.

Just six words…

May 20, 2021 By TIMOTHY EDWARDS Leave a Comment

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.

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.