The two sports I enjoy most of late are tennis and rugby league.
As my co-workers would attest, I usually measure the days not by their names but rather by when I play tennis.
For example, Tuesday is the day before tennis, Wednesday is naturally tennis day, Thursday is the day between tennis, and Friday is another tennis day, and by virtue of a great boss, my day off.
My wife believes I am obsessive with my pursuits and chips me about my irrational attitude to learning to be a better player.
I think my greatest failings in sports and possibly life have always been that I sometimes thought I was better than my skill level.
There are only a couple of things I need to become a better tennis player, natural ability, better hand/eye coordination, and you could even throw in some of a better attitude.
As a teenager and young adult, I had visions about being a rugby league player, I, fortunately, played in several strong teams which contained some very talented players and some astute men had coached us.
One of my former coaches was Johnny Gleeson, a two-time Kangaroo tourist and five-eight for Queensland.
Now “Jack “as he was known to his players, was a stickler for presentation. I can remember being chipped for having my socks down around my ankles during a football game.
His words of wisdom, which he yelled from the sideline, were “Richo if you can’t be a rugby league player, at the very least you can look like one, now pull your socks up“.
I have taken his sage advice, and no matter what I do, I at least try and look like I know what I am doing. I think they now call that fake it till you make it.
He also once told me that the way you play the game is how you live your life, which I didn’t quite understand until a little later in life.
With the NRL season kicking off this Thursday night, I will perch myself in front of the TV and revel in the intensity and skill of the sport.
Like most the rugby league followers, I enjoy the competition, watching the players intimidation of their opponent and the challenge of the physical confrontation.
Once the players cross that white line and place their feet onto the playing surface, they will rely on the knowledge of their training drills, their fitness and the physique that has been built over years of diet and repetition in the gym.
Sitting in the lounge room, it is easy to forget how much it has taken for these players to be at the top of their chosen sport.
Each year the standard continues to get better.
The game is fast-paced, and the players are now built for physical contact and speed, with little separating the wingers from the forwards in size.
I look forward to the season opener, starting with turning the volume down a little and watching the game play out more than listening to the commentators telling me.
With daylight savings still in NSW, the coverage will start earlier. I will enjoy trying to educate my two granddaughters on the tactics of rugby league, having failed so miserably with the education of my wife and her three daughters.
Though I think I have already failed, the youngest of the two granddaughters, “Puddle“, knows I leave home to play tennis, but seeing tennis on tv, she declares football.
For the next 30 weeks, it will be a competition between rugby league and tennis for the allocation of days. Still, somehow, I don’t think I will be able to change Wednesday from tennis day to become the day before the NRL game, it just doesn’t sound right, but just maybe Friday will be footy night.
