My favourite sport in the world is Aussie rules football. I think when you factor in all the physical and athletic attributes required to play the game, the mental strength required and the aesthetic appeal of the game with its pace just make it the best sport in the world. Second in my eyes is the American version of football. What I love about American football is that each position is filled by a different type of athlete, and each position needs different attributes. Running back requires vision, instinct, explosiveness, strength and evasiveness. Guard and tackle need core and upper strength. Quarterback needs peripheral vision, decision making and a bullet arm, etc, etc. Combine that with the fascinating and endless supply of tactics, and American football is a truly remarkable sport. What slows it down though is the fact that it is, well, kind of slow. The stop start nature of the sport, and the endless ad-breaks that need to be taken just ruin the flow of the sport. I'd have our code of football higher than the American one anyway, but the time consuming nature of the game only hurts its cause.
I've been thinking about what my third favourite sport in the world is. I'm sure it used to be cricket, but I just can't muster up any enthusiasm for the sport anymore. Too long, too many spells of nothingness. Amazingly, and very un-Australian of me, I prefer baseball to cricket. I love statistics, and baseball is just dominated by them. If ever you could reduce a person or group of people to a set of numbers it's in baseball. Bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, down by 2 has got to be the most exciting situation in all of the sports just about. The problem is the lack of action and its hard to sustain enthusiasm over 9 innings. Nonetheless I'm a fan of the sport.
The less said about Soccer the better. The Italian soccer team from the 2006 World Cup has officialy decimated by faith in the world game. Tennis has risen lately because of the Nadal-Federer rivalry. The problem is though, unless it is Nadal v Federer I'm probably not going to watch the match. Rugby blah. Hockey blah. Golf blah. My third favourite sport in the world is now basketball. These guys (in my opinion) are the best athletes in the world. LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are just the best overall athletes in the world. Tall, strong, fast, co-ordinated, explosive, mentally tough. These guys have it all. What I love also is the versatility of the game these days. It's kind of inspiring to see an awkward looking small white guy from Canada to be rated the best player in the NBA for two years running. Point guard has developed into my favourite position in all of sports just about. What I love most about basketball and the NBA is this - more than any other team sport, on every night there is the potential for one guy absolutely take over a match. It was Game 5 of the Lakers-Spurs Western Conference Finals where Kobe Bryant absolutely took over the match and won purely because he wanted to. More than any other sport, basketball has the ability for one single guy to elevate his teammates to a higher place. In my eyes that's what sport is all about.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment