1. Romanian captain, Cristian Petre, who after suffering a 67-3 loss to England,  was asked by a reporter about the game and replied “I play rugby for happiness.”  More.
2. The French rugby team won the toss to choose who wears their own home jerseys in the Rugby World Cup Final and declined to wear their treasured ‘bleu’. Instead they felt it was right for Kiwis, as RWC hosts, should  wear their own colours.   More
3. Young Kerry Gaelic football Tomás Ó’Sé after the final whistle carried the ball as a souvenir to the Dublin goal keeper who kicked the winning point in 2011 All Ireland Gaelic Final. Caught on camera! More.
4. Former Somali refugee, Mohamed Farah, won gold for Britain in the 5,000 metres World Athletic Championships – making his new nation very proud while arch rival, Kenyan, Paul Lagat (representing USA) was the first to embrace him and congratulate him. More.
5. Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni showed honour when he allowed England’s batsman to be reinstated after being ‘run out’ because of a misunderstanding that the game had stopped for tea. More.
6. Vancouver’s Langley Elementary School children displayed true sportsmanship after Ice Hockey riots when they wrote to Boston school children to congratulate the winners, Boston. More.
7. Ex American basket ball pro, ex junkie and now coach, Chris Herren, is a true sportsman as he coaches children and encourages them to always have fun & enjoy their games. More.
8. The Indian & Pakistan cricket fans – arch enemies became friends for life as they shared the excitement & enjoyment of fierce competition as over one billion people watched the match on television.  One man offered to sell his liver … More.
9. 19 year old Japanese golfer, Ryo Ishikawa, donated all this year’s earnings to victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  More.
10. Irish rugby coach, Declan Kidney when asked about the illegal Welsh try that won the game said, that ‘while he felt extremely frustrated, he was not going to make an issue of it at a time when so many in the world were suffering. More.

I will tweet later our all time favourite single moment for 2011. Happy New Year  To One and All.  Say ‘Yes’ to Great Sportsmanship in 2012.

Roger Milla’s samba with the corner flag, Peter Crouch’s Robot Dance or Pele leaping into the arms of other players with the biggest grin,  or this goalkeeper’s extraordinary celebration or,  this fan singing and dancing and inspiring a stadium, or perhaps this 19 year old jockey’s unbridled joy as he wins the 2011 Epson Derby* – what’s your favourite celebration?

Some say that the young French jockey’s celebration was dangerous. But surely it was better than ‘Rooney’s Rage’  style celebrations , that we see on TV screens every week as millionaire footballers release  angry tension with roars and aggressive fists (see why do people celebrate with anger?). Where is the joy gone?

Do players forget the fun, excitement and joy of playing in top class competitions? Research into England’s most recent World Cup flop revealed ‘fear of failure’ as the major factor.

Great players do not fear failure. In fact they have, what sports psychologists call, ‘Failure Tolerance’ – they don’t beat themselves up when they make a mistake. They just get on with it as in the case of Martin Palermo who once missed three penalties in one match for Argentina but never gave up and went to score the goal that put them into the last World Cup.

The  former junkie basketball player now coach highlighted last month seems to have it right. He gets kids to enjoy their game first and foremost. Come to think of it, the world’s most successful football/soccer manager, Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson constantly reminds his players to ‘enjoy themselves’.

So come on, let’s get the joyous celebrations back into sport. Share your favourite celebration here by posting a comment. Tell me about your favourite celebration (in any sport).

Thanks to Paul Bowket for alerting me about the unbridled joy of the young French jockey as he comes from nowhere to win the 2011 Derby (*2 mins 30 seconds). 

Indian fielder, Praveen Kumar actually fell over the boundary while stopping the ball from touching the boundary rope. He got up slowly and casually threw the ball back to the wicket keeper. The two English batsmen had run three runs but now thought they had actually scored a four, so the second batsman, Bell, grounded his bat, turned and walked towards the pavilion for afternoon tea. At which point the Indian wicket keeper caught the ball at Bell’s end and knocked the bails off shouting the traditional appeal ‘How’s that?’ to the umpire. Bell was out!

The third umpire was called in as the two English batsman stood by the boundary. The dismissal was confirmed. Bell was definitely out. The crowd booed.

During the tea break, the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, discussed the decision with his team and decided to withdraw their appeal so that Bell could be re-instated.

“In a game that has become increasingly dishonourable at times it required an honourable act by India’s captain and his team to enable Bell to complete an innings that appeared to have been curtailed by his own doziness” Mike Selvey, Guardian Newspaper.

Ian Bell: “It was the right decision for the spirit of the game. It was very naive of me to assume the ball was dead. I didn’t hear the umpire call ‘over’. To walk off for tea was stupid. I have learned a lot of lessons.”

Senior Indian batsman, Rahu Dravid said “it was the right thing to do. If that had happened to one of our guys we would have felt disappointed. The original decision was right in the laws of the game but not in the spirit of the game. Dhoni (the captain) had a team meeting and there was a unanimity in the decision.”

England and Wales cricket board chief executive, David Collier said “the withdrawal of a valid appeal at the tea interval was made in the spirit of cricket by the Indian team and demonstrates the true spirit in which the game of cricket should be played…”

—end—

Point Of Information: If England beat the World No. 1 team, India, in this four test match series and given that Ireland beat England in the most recent World Cup, does this make Ireland the Number one cricket team in the world?

He treasures every moment. Thank you Tim, you put everything into perspective. Tim has got his own blog.

One wonders what historic moments in rugby and football (soccer) will emerge over the next 50 years (although difficult to imagine, if you’re over 50!). What magical moments of wizardry and wonderful moments of sportsmanship will emerge?

Leinster v Ulster was the first (16 Dec 1876) and last (31 Dec 2006) game of rugby played at the old Lansdowne Road stadium. The first international match was played way back in Victorian times in 1878 (when Ireland was under British rule). When the Republic of Ireland was eventually established, both the Republic and the North Of Ireland still united, every year, to wear the green shirt and take on the world’s best rugby teams. Football does not do this, except once, in 1973 a United Ireland team* took on the World champions, Brazil. The venue? Lansdowne Road. For 128 years Lansdowne Road was an international venue, much loved by anyone who visited. It then closed its doors for a moment (three and a half years in the greater scheme of things) and moved its rugby and football events to the hidden jewel in Ireland’s crown, the 82,500 Croke Park, HQ of the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association)*.

What historic events and wonderful sportsmanship moments will emerge in this, the newest stadium in the oldest venue? Perhaps it is the oldest international sports venue in the world – can someone enlighten me?

* See the full stories of the 1973 moment when Ireland united in football in Lansdowne Road and also the 2007 moment when ‘God saved Croke Park’ in the Great Moments Of Sportsmanship collection of published short stories.

Who remembers Bobby Moore and Pele swapping shirts and embracing each other after their epic battle in the opening rounds in the 1970 World Cup (see front cover of my book)? *

Or France 1998 when USA played Iran (despite having cut off diplomatic relations) – the players exchanged gifts, helped each other up off the ground and secretly arranged to play a 3 game friendly series without either government knowing.*

Or the magical moment in Germany 2006 just before kick off when the Iranian goalkeeper gave a bouquet of flowers to, the still grieving, Mexican goalkeeper, Sanchez, who had just flown back from Guadalajara after burying his father.*

Will players be allowed to swap shirts? Who will demonstrate sportsmanship? So that kids everywhere see how cool sportsmanship can be when opposing players do battle and embrace afterwards? Why do players play? Because they love it. Let’s see who will show their unbridled joy?  Who will fully embrace the magic of the brotherhood of football? Send me your stories, observations and thoughts as it all unfolds and I’ll publish them here.

Quiz Question: Who is England’s best ever goal scorer (goals to games ratio)? Very few English fans know it. Post your answer. I’ll also give full answer in my next post.

Footnote * indicates the full two minute story is in the Great Moments Of Sportsmanship book.

He had come runner up four times, and after years of dedication his moment seemed to arrive. The dream was crystal clear as he stepped up to play the18th hole again in a ‘Sudden Death’ play-off against the 49 times PGA tournament winner and Ryder Cup golfer, Furyk.

With the light fading over the beautiful harbour and the greens, both players safely reached the fairway from their tee shots. Davis’s second shot ran across the green, over the edge, bounced off some rocks below and finally settled on nicely packed sand with some reeds behind it. However, he successfully chipped up onto the green with his third shot. Now here’s the magic.

No one saw this happen except Davis. As he played his third shot he thought he might have barely touched ‘a loose impediment’ (a loose reed/bit of straw) which is a penalty. “It was one of those things I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. And I thought we’d check on TV, and indeed there was movement,” Davis said.

He immediately called for the tournament referee, Slugger White, and told him what had happened. It was so subtle that the crowd didn’t see it and the TV cameras didn’t see it.

He felt honour-bound to tell the referee, who checked with the TV slow motion replays and duly imposed a two shot penalty for ‘making contact with a loose impediment in a greenside hazard’ (rule 13.4: moving a loose impediment during a takeaway). Davis’s dream was over.

However, his actions on the 18th hole at Harbour Town Golf Links course, will be remembered by many for a long time to come. You can see this magical sportsmanship moment. Slugger White later said: “He’s class, first class”. Brian Davis has since received floods of congratulation cards, letters, emails from people all over America and in particular from parents who said they told their children this is how you play sport and this is how you live life.

Davis proves that nice guys are winners. In his own words, here’s how good it actually felt after the high tension game was over. “It’s probably the first time in my career, or in any golfer’s, where [you] lost in a play-off and actually drove home more positive than when you left,” he said. “It has been a good experience for me, and it has been great for the game of golf that we do call rules infractions on ourselves. It’s just part of the game.”

Note: Thanks to Ollie Campbell for alerting me about this story.

Dr. Sharon Kay Stoll on why golfers call their own penalties

Never may we lose this tradition. I have another question for you:  Why do some players now, when asked to swap shirts by their opposing player, point to the dressing room and, I assume, suggest that they swap shirts in the dressing room. Is this protocol madness. Doesn’t the FA, EUFA and FIFA realise that the best PR for the game is to let kids see players swap shirts. Does anyone know the logic here?

Liverpool have this tradition too. So too do Munster rugby & Queens Park Rangers FC (see story in the book). Now I’m delighted to add the mighty Real Madrid to this growing ‘club’ of sportsmanship.

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I was delighted to hear that he used to ask the Nottingham Forest fans to resist using foul language by showing them his handwritten sign. Any fans out there can tell me what words he wrote on the sign?

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