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Sure it's him. Wasn't sure which of the top football players you might know considering that I only know one former cricket player only.😇
BTW, there'll be The Finals in Germany this weekend which are the German National Championships in numerous sports also meant to be the final preparation and qualification for the Olympics. Big time event and extensive free-TV media coverage.
 
Use to play a lot of football, rugby, cricket & tennis... at college on a Saturday I use to play football in the morning & rugby in the arvo over winter 🙂
I'll see if I can find those German National Championships in different sports over the weekend mate :thumbsu: ...we don't get free-Tv sport live in NZ, we either have to pay for it through Sky Sport here or through Spark Sport, which is a pain.
 
Mal, sounds as if you were an allrounder at college. I used to swim and had regular training at a training centre for two years before I started playing tennis in different leagues only and doing some running on the side.
I doubt that the German championschips in more than 18 sports will be broadcast in English. I checked it and found out that TV coverage will be provided by two national channels only and not by EUROSPORT which also has an English channel.
As I wrote earlier on, over here big event sport is only broadcast by pay-TV channels, too, which I also regret to put it mildly.
 
Yeah, yonks ago mate use to be pretty athletic & have good hand-eye coordination - reckon if you have that natural athletic ability you can perform pretty well in any sport... from there it's vital to have good basic skill sets in sports you like playing, then practice those skills over & over again a ton of times, that applies to a job or anything else, the more times you do it the better you get at doing it.
Sounds like you were a pretty good all-round sportsman too Thomas... that's a shame mate that I won't be able to watch some of your sports events.
 
Well, I'm not so sure about my natural athletic ability nor about being an allrounder. As a boy I tended not to be that athletic tbh. My mum noticed that and encouraged me and my twin brother to do some sport. Because she'd liked it as a girl she suggested swimming. So we joined that local club. After two years it turned out that we could reasonably swim the four strokes but didn't get better at a certain point. So there was a push and a pull to leave the training centre and start looking elsewhere. Since there was a tennis club near our home my mother again suggested joining that because she'd always wanted to play it herself. It was one of the best decisions in my life and an eye-opener in many respects.

At the age of 15 I realised that a good physical condition would be helpful but that was something that didn't seem to develop naturally. So I bought myself an expander (there were no health clubs back then in the late 60s, early 70s, were there?) and exercised daily and I also took up running. Within a year my PE teacher noticed improvements and I did, too. I could walk on my hands and do a proper handstand and other things which prompted my PE teacher to invite me to a gym team but I declined and stuck to tennis.

Have been jogging ever since I was 15 (no more than 10km and mostly between 3 and 5km) but regularly as clockwork at least once or twice a week until today no matter what the circumstances were or where I was . As a retiree I do sports almost every day.
What about you and Richie?
 
That's impressive Thomas that you were able to walk on your hands, need great balance & strength to do that, sounds like you could've been very good at gymnastics.
Yeah, we didn't have any health clubs back in the 60' & 70's either... had one of those expanders as well, think they had 4 metal springs in them & you could take a few off to make it to easier to stretch the expander out, very very difficult to stretch it out with all the springs on though.
As a kid sport is a great thing, it's fun to play, keeps them active & fit, also they have less chance of getting into trouble.

I go on walks most days, but make a point of walking up as many hills as I can to get the full benefit of a walkabout - these days play a bit of cricket, football & tennis with my mates, but not rugby anymore, the old body couldn't take those bone-crushing tackles 😄
Reckon it's crucial to execute the basics well in any sport, one of them is staying on the balls of your feet when needed so you can move in any direction very quickly - also at times it's only little adjustments that makes all the difference... say a sport like tennis, you might play say half a dozen forehands in a row, but when you switch to the backhand you need to slightly adjust your grip so you feel comfortable hitting through the ball, then when you switch back to the forehand you need to slightly adjust your grip again, so again you feel comfortable hitting through the ball & playing volleys etc.
 
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looker-on said:
Well, I'm not so sure about my natural athletic ability nor about being an allrounder. As a boy I tended not to be that athletic tbh. My mum noticed that and encouraged me and my twin brother to do some sport. Because she'd liked it as a girl she suggested swimming. So we joined that local club. After two years it turned out that we could reasonably swim the four strokes but didn't get better at a certain point. So there was a push and a pull to leave the training centre and start looking elsewhere. Since there was a tennis club near our home my mother again suggested joining that because she'd always wanted to play it herself. It was one of the best decisions in my life and an eye-opener in many respects.

At the age of 15 I realised that a good physical condition would be helpful but that was something that didn't seem to develop naturally. So I bought myself an expander (there were no health clubs back then in the late 60s, early 70s, were there?) and exercised daily and I also took up running. Within a year my PE teacher noticed improvements and I did, too. I could walk on my hands and do a proper handstand and other things which prompted my PE teacher to invite me to a gym team but I declined and stuck to tennis.

Have been jogging ever since I was 15 (no more than 10km and mostly between 3 and 5km) but regularly as clockwork at least once or twice a week until today no matter what the circumstances were or where I was . As a retiree I do sports almost every day.
What about you and Richie?
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Seems you and Mal have led rich athletic lives. You specially Mal. All those sports. When did you start cycling Thomas?

As for me, while you guys were building those leg muscles and hand eye co-ordination I had to make do with a poor sporting life at boarding school. We did have weekly gym classes but as for organised field sports they were virtually non existent. This was a school designed for discipline rather than for fresh air and exercise. When I went up to senior school we had to play field sports on paddocks that cattle grazed on. Dead set. So if we wanted a game of cricket or footy we had to clear off all the cow crap first. So you can see why enthusiasm for exercise and some good old vitamin D was rather diminished. Only the keenest.. like me.. managed to play plenty of footy.. mostly rugby league, and I became a pretty good 5/8 . I was too small to emulate my Dragons and and Kangaroo (national team name) hero..Johnny Raper.. as a lock forward. But like the great "Chook" I excelled in creativity and especially defense. I loved nothing more than cutting down a runaway three quarter.. ala this famous pic of Raper against Barry Rushworth in a Sydney final in the early 60s- .http://www.eraofthebiff.com/images/players-page-pics/p-62.jpg. I also developed a side step and pretended I was like the other Dragon great "Changa" Langlands.
I never excelled in any cricket disciplines but was competitive. It was here my love for the game was born. Come the annual Sports Day and I held my own in running sprints for my respective House...
 
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But you recognised the sport immediately. It's Sally Fitzgibbons who will proudly be wearing your nation’s green and gold dress when trying to go for gold in Tokyo in July.
 
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Signman said:
Only because I noticed the surfboard 🙂 ...I'm a kiwi mate, we wear black, like our national rugby team the All Blacks.
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Oh, sorry, mate, I didn't know that.🤗 Where does it say so? I wouldn't have thought so because you were mentioning the Jaffas recently.😇
I know the NZ national dress is black. Know that from your rowing eight team who has always been a strong competitor of ours.
 
looker-on said:
But you recognised the sport immediately. It's Sally Fitzgibbons who will proudly be wearing your nation’s green and gold dress when trying to go for gold in Tokyo in July.
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Hang on Thomas. I'm playing too. Still I did know her, being a fellow Aussie.
 
Signman said:
I remember you telling me about how the boarding school really restricted you in playing sport, must have been a real pain mate - that's hilarious though that you had to clear the field of cattle crap if you wanted to play cricket or footy.
Sounds like you were a pretty good cricketer & rugby league player Richie... you were a playmaker in rugby league, in rugby I also played in the playmaker role at 1st-five {number 10}
Johnny Raper must have been a top player mate, great that he played for your Dragons as well... reckon all 3 of us were very handy at playing sport.
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When I was finally released from boarding school after almost a decade of deprivation.. I did let my hair down and played both cricket and league for my new school, after which I played footy for my first place of work.. a department store. I did consider a career in the game but a serious recurring knee injury put paid to that. After that I became a couch sportsman. My first live cricket match was watching Lillee and Thommo pound the Poms at the SCG in '75. You probably already know that Mal.. info is for Jessica and Thomas.
 
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