My penultimate newsletter (and the second appearance in this newsletter of "penultimate")
Nominations for the Annual Awards are open, and all sensibly daft suggestions are welcomed - please send your nominations via email to timarugc@xtra.co.nz
This week I have been following the Jekyll & Hyde performance of the English football team, who started with a 6-2 victory over Iran and followed it up with a 0-0 draw againnst those footballing titans, the US.
The World Cup, that global showcase of the most popular single sport on the planet, has provided a number of shocks already, with the minnows surprising the "bigger" fish and giving every underdog the glimmer of hope, that shred of belief, that produces fanatic followers.
Which begs the question, how ddo they do it? How do they take on the greatest and triumph? And, are there any lessons for us mere sporting mortals?
To my mind, there are a couple of lessons to be learnt:
Lesson 1: Total committment - there is ineveitably a total, one hundred percent committment (there can't be more, ignore the commentators) to the cause, all 11 players literally put their bodies on the line (evidence Saudi Arabia's performance against Argentina)
Lesson 2: Belief - the teams believe that they can achieve their goals, the Japanese believed that they would beat Germany, and Germany started to believe that they were going to lose
Lesson 3 - The inequities of sport - sport throws up oddball results every now and then, it could be that the opposition are not at their best, it could be that a ball bounces the wrong way, a tad too high, a foot slips at the wrong moment, the wind gusts at just the wrong time and all of a sudden the momentum is going the wrong way, it is not going to be your day - a very common feeling on the average golf course
Lesson 4 - Enjoy the moment - all of the so-called minnows are still expected to go out of the competition early, and the competition is designed to get the bigger teams through to the final rounds (all competitions are - they are sponsored by companies that want to see the big teams in the latter stages so that there are more eyeballs on the advertising); the minnows rarely get very far, but they all live for that fleeting moment of pure unadulterated joy when it all comes together and they taste an unlikely victory
As golfers we are lucky in that we can have several (sometimes) moments during a round where everything just clicks, and we hit the ball in the middle of the club just how we want to, the difference between us and the pro's is that they will do it the shot before and the shot after, and the one after that. We just get moments as minnows in the sun, so to my mind, just enjoy it when it happens, and don't worry about the rest, there is always another day
My range of self help books, "Bull for Balls" will not be in any bookshops soon
Stay safe, stay dry (bloody weather) and have fun out there
Steve
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