Sporting Arrogance

I read with interest today an article on MSN entitled 'The most humble men in sport' as I had read the author's previous article 'Worst examples of sporting arrogance' that had contained some of my idols Cristiano Ronaldo,Muhammad Ali and Eric Cantona who I had to totally agree had an arrogance about them but for me it was an acceptable part of their persona all went too far on occasion and made me cringe but thanks for the memories guys, the article also included Lewis Hamilton who I like, why because he is British (I actually hate the sport he participates but sadly the tribal affect kicks in)and I always look to see how he is getting on in the F1 table.

A sport I thoroughly enjoy watching and proud to explain to my Brasilian buddies 'International Rugby' I know this will sound like a cliche but a sport played by real men, as a Man U fan I was delighted to see United recently beat LFC but the penalty 'Given' to us was embarrassing, these days I struggle to call football a sport, yes there was contact but two things sprang to mind, the first memories of a teacher poking me in the chest with much more force than our boy received to go down so easily (I laughed to my self thinking if a grown man can go down so easily, I must have a claim against the teacher and a big pot of money due for the trauma his poking caused, but he has been dead at least 25 years)the second thought to come to mind was Jonah Lomu the legendary All Black rugby union player and in particular the 1995 world cup in S Africa when he burst through and 3 England players could not get him down he sliced through them like a hot knife through butter and in the 1999 Tri Nations series against S Africa it took eight men to tackle him and get him down.

This brings me on to my final one on the list the 'Haka' as every person who has watched the All Blacks play knows it is a short tribal dance done at the beginning of the match but to me it makes the game exciting and builds up the atmosphere and I dream of the day I can watch my beloved Wales play them in the world cup final and hear us Taffies belt out Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau - The Land Of My Fathers.