Everyone has bad days, for some people they are bad hair days, bad clothes day, bad luck days and just bad days in general. For my brother.. it was a bad golf day. There is no need to explain, the video speaks for itself.

Labels: Humour, Sport

Going through the DSTV channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon i stumbled across The Contender. The Contender is a reality TV show based around boxing. However many fighters that couldn't cut it on their own in the world of boxing have been thrown together in a house to train and compete against one another for a shot at some title or another. That's not really important. At the end of each episode two boxers go head to head in a five round fight where one of them loses and is eliminated.

The shocking part of this little story is that at these fights families are present. Now I'm not talking about brother, father, mother family. The family present at the fight on this evenings show were children, the boxers children, with their mothers/grandmothers watching over them.

What message are we teaching our children by sending them to a boxing ring containing their fathers? The one little girl (maybe 10 years old) was shouting, jumping, screaming waving her arms yelling at/for/with her father to either kick the other boxers ass or for her father not to have his ass kicked. He lost, she cried, looked dissapointed and upset that her father had lost. This child had just witnessed her father take a voluntary beating in the name of money and was upset that he lost.

Look, I've never seen my father get a butt whoopin' and I'm still pretty messed up. Imagine what this child is going to grow up believing in later in her life. It's ok to solve problems through violence. Violence is ok when it's for monetary gain. My father did it so why can't I?

I just think that it is absolutely horrific that this is what we as viewers have become. We are willing to see people eat things, beat people, fight, scream, cheat, deface love all in the name of ratings on a TV show. It's not for me.

Labels: Boxing, Society, Sport

Chatting to a mate of mine about sports while watching the Proteas whop Pakistan today, we decided that it's pretty sweet to live in the Southern Hemisphere. We both decided that the Southern Hemisphere (SH) dominates the world of sports in many areas.

I decided that I should do some research in to this, and guess what I found? I found a lot of tables by alot of sources, took me a few minutes to find some reliable ranking pages but it has been done. Below you will see the tables for Rugby, Football, Hockey, Cricket and Netball.

RED teams are Southern Hemisphere

IRB World Rankings 23/10/2006

Position (last week)	Member Union	Rating points
1(1)	NEW ZEALAND	92.91
2(2)	FRANCE	87.53
3(3)	SOUTH AFRICA	87.05
4(4)	AUSTRALIA	86.13
5(5)	IRELAND	82.01
6(6)	ENGLAND	79.66
7(7)	SCOTLAND	77.72
8(8)	ARGENTINA	77.49
9(9)	WALES	76.34
10(10)	SAMOA	73.86

		1	Australia	128
		2	South Africa	123
		3	New Zealand	114
		4	Pakistan	111
		5	India	111
		6	Sri Lanka	108
		7	West Indies	106
		8	England	97
		9	Bangladesh	34
		10	Zimbabwe	30
		11	Kenya	0

		1	Australia	130
		2	England	119
		3	Pakistan	112
		4	India	111
		5	Sri Lanka	103
		6	South Africa	94
		7	New Zealand	92
		8	West Indies	72
		9	Zimbabwe	28
		10	Bangladesh	2

Fifa World Football Rankings For October 2006

Rank	Team	Pts Oct 06	+/-Rank Sep 06	+/-Pts Sep 06
1	Brazil	1649	0	19
2	Italy	1550	0	0
3	Argentina	1479	0	7
4	France	1462	0	0
5	England	1434	0	0
6	Netherlands	1322	0	0
7	Spain	1309	0	0
8	Portugal	1301	0	0
9	Germany	1229	0	0
10	Czech R	1223	0	0

So there they are... and I think I was wrong... SH is not the place to be in terms of sports. We (when I say we I include all nations, continents and states in the SH for a full list visit Wikipedia) need to do some work, hit the streets, crack the gyms, pump the iron and inject... no wait, thats illegal!!

From the top:

Rugby
4 out of the top 10, 3 of those in the top 4.
That pretty good.

Cricket
One Day Internationals: 5 out of the top 10, 3 of those in the top 3.
Test Matches: 4 out of the top 10, 1 in the top position.
Thats awesome, Cricket we definately dominate.

Football
2 in the top 10, 2 of those in the top 3.
Thats not so good.

Hockey
5 out of the top 10, 2 of those in top 2.
Thats pretty damn good

Netball
Men: 4 out of top 10.
Women: 3 out of top 10.
Hockey Not So Good.

So on average: We are dominated in 3 out of the above 5 sports. we only dominate in 2, Hockey and Cricket and that is merely because we have teams in the top 3.

I think that in terms of the above sports there are a few countries that we all need to thank as SH inhabitants:

Australia

New Zealand

South Africa

Brazil

Without these four countries, we would have no teams in any of the rankings in the top 5.

Labels: Sport