The curse of the English sports fan

Off the top of my head I can think of the following sportsmen and women from the UK who are at the top or at least in the top few percentage in their sport.

Lee Westwood and Luke Donald - golf

Jenson button - formula 1

Andy Murray - tennis

Mark Cavendish - possibly the fastest man in professional cycling peloton

A rugby league that attracts the top players from around the world.

Arguably the best football league in Europe, possibly the world.

A cricket league setup that has attracted the top players for many years.

The problem is that they are all cursed! I call it the curse of the English sports fan. Leading up to an event the English people are amazing in getting behind their sports teams / people - messages, dedications, flags on houses etc. That's enviable in my opinion. When I look at reports and the like from outside the country - I get the impression that the fans really believe that their team is the best and will win. The curse sets in when people just through a bit of doubt in when something happens before the event. A lot of it is sensationalism on behalf of the media to get a big story but the rest of it - no idea why it starts.

During the recent French open Andy Murray came up against Raphael Nadal and a twitter message I got (from an English person) was 'Andy Murray thinks he can beat Nadal - sorry Andy you can’t'. That’s ridiculous!! Top sportsmen have to believe they can win and one bit of doubt could mean not winning.

The curse continues after the event too. The media jump in and the people too. The people are very passionate and the support them team / people had goes from completely for to completely against and they play the blame game and blame everybody on the team and their dog before they will accept the truth about the outcome. This the gets buried, only to fester until the next time something happens and the skeletons get dragged out to haunt the next team even generations later!

England has an amazing sporting ability and infrastructure but the same structure that holds it up is tearing it down.

Heroes come and go - Legends never die!

I first read about this guy in Runners World a few editions ago. An absolute amazing story of a man who came from a normal job to become possibly one of the greatest runners of his time.

That said - the article below highlights his next attempt at breaking records which to me is admirable and I support him all the way!

The problem with the article is actually the people who comment on it below the article! they go into the argument of whether or not he is the best runner whether his sponsors made him who he is! This is an absolute outrage in my books and they even compare him to club runners they know!! Despicable and an insult to Ryan!

Read it for yourself and make your own decision!

Ryan Sandes Aims For Another Ultra Trail Running Title

Hero to ZERO!

I have recently written a blog post about the wonderful uplifting experience we had at ABSA in Durban. We have subsequently had fantastic service from them in paying up our vehicle finance and closing that account.

On the back of this great service and as we are looking to finance another vehicle, I phoned ABSA in order to start the process. I did recall the trial and suffering that we went through in order to finance our last car but was optimistic that this time would be different because of the above happening. Well I was suitably impressed with the initial part of the conversation until she had to find the car dealer that we are interested in using to get the car. She had to search for the dealer – no problem at all.

The problem came where the phone was hung up!! That was it – the phone call over! It was now after 6pm so the call centre is closed.

I stood there in absolute shock! Needless to say I am not so fond of ABSA currently to say the least!