At the launch of Scorum we did have a number of Professional sports stars who sadly no longer seem to post or at least are as active as we would need or like them to be and this gave me an idea for a competition.
You see, most of us here are behind the keyboard writing about sports but was there a small chance you could have been the one being written about? Was there some event or problem that prevented your sporting greatness from taking shape? Well if there was get posting about it and be in with a chance of earning some SCR.
To give you the general idea I'll tell you about my possible route to being a Professional Footballer being cruelly denied to me thanks to unfortunate bathroom mistake!
I have been lucky in that I have always been able to take up a new sport and be able to at least play it quite well really quickly, some would call this having good eye/hand coordination. I was the first pupil to do the somersault in the trampoline class, could throw the Javelin and the Discus the furthest in the first games lesson in Secondary School etc.
So it was with some optimism I attempted to get into at least one of the School teams, first up was Cricket and one of my mates was well into it and persuaded me to attend the trials, though I was quite good due to the skills I previously mentioned, I didn't seem to hit it off with the coach and I wasn't quite what he was looking for, it felt to me he was looking for the next Ian Botham and clearly that wasn't me. I certainly didn't know any of the techniques having never played the game before, I had just the one and that was to just try to hit the ball, none of this defensive stuff for me. Obviously I didn't get selected and that was the end of that endeavour.
Rugby and Hockey was in my opinion just an excuse for the School bullies to give you a proper going over with the blessing of the PE instructor, so was to be avoided at all costs. We had some really good Swimmers so there was no chance there at all.
So the only sport left was Football. I loved Football, from the complete mess of a huddle of kids chasing a ball around at Primary School to the constant Football matches played during break times and I remember quite vividly the poor Football coach saying for the umpteenth time "Spread out" and "Just spread out and pass the ball". I got this, I had this, I spread out and well, nothing, I just watched the heaving mass of kids go past me chasing that damn ball. However I think it was the 3rd or 4th lesson that by some stroke of luck the ball got accidentally kicked in my direction, it wasn't a pass that's for sure but yours truly scored a blinding goal or so it seemed to an 8 year old. I wrote about that goal for weeks, the Football coach said "at last" though it never happened again, it just went back to a throng of kids chasing the ball again and the coach just gave up.
The most amusing moment was when he stopped us mid game with an almighty shrill of the whistle, physically moved the kids into some kind of formation and demonstrated the passing of the football to an unmarked team mate and how it left the opposition who he had left in a huddle completely helpless. Needless to say he restarted the game for things to just carry on as they were, with 19 players chasing the ball and me on my own watching helplessly.
So it was with great expectation I attended the trial for the School Football team, surely my time had come. My School had a lot of ground but for some reason I don't remember the trial was at the local park, which was quite close to where I lived and it was after School, I rushed home and had a quick shower got changed and run over to join the trial. Now I should talk more about that quick shower as that is the key to my downfall, you see I should have taken a bit more time than I did, however all will be revealed later.
So the trial starts and I am all pumped and ready and I do fancy playing in goal, now it's been said that you have to be fairly mad to play in goal or bad at Football, hopefully I can say neither applied to me, I was just good in goal and liked the idea of being the hero, to me the goal keeper position was the most important on the pitch. I was actually quite good in midfield and indeed played both in midfield and in goal for a number of teams after I left School.
If I remember correctly it was about this time of year, around September or October and the British weather did its thing and some slight drops of rain started to appear. Nothing to get worried about as this trial would have probably carried on in a monsoon. However that is when I started to get into trouble, my eyes started to tingle, it was just a tingle at first but then as the rain came down more heavily my vision became blurry. I rubbed my eyes and that just made it worse and at that moment it happened, we conceded and yours truly was to blame, then a second and by that stage I could hardly see.
I had to come off the pitch and that replacement meant I wasn't going to be picked for the team. What had gone wrong, well in my eagerness to get to the trial I had somehow not washed out enough of the shampoo from my hair and when it started raining the water from the rain combined with it to run down my face and into my eyes, I was done in by not rinsing my hair thoroughly enough!
Now its a far stretch to say this ended my chance at a Professional career in Football but that's my creative license as a writer, but you never know things might have turned out very differently than they did had I just rinsed out all that shampoo.
So now you get the idea, just write a post about your own sporting mishap that prevented you from obtaining sporting greatness and leave a link to it in this post. I will pick out the best three when this post pays out in 7 days and the prizes will be.
1st 1000 SCR
2nd 600 SCR
3rd 300 SCR
With 1 prize of 100 SCR for the most entertaining entry not winning a main prize.
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