Alternative Sports Thread | Page 2 | Vital Football

Alternative Sports Thread

Whilst football is obviously my great sporting love, squash is the game I most enjoyed playing.

I used to play for about 15 years from my mid-twenties until I was around 40.

If you like individual sports it has everything. Skill, speed, athleticism, endurance, eye-hand coordination, mental agility....

And it is such a physically demanding sport. There were days when, without exaggeration, I could barely get out of bed after a competitive match the night before.

Sky used to give it great coverage in its early years but then started phasing it out until they dropped it altogether. I guess squash doesn't translate easily to television. The top professionals make the game look ridiculously easy with their court coverage and shot retrieval. Unless you've played the game it's hard to appreciate how much skill and athleticism is involved.

It's a great sporting injustice though that squash has never been accepted as an Olympic sport. Each time a new round of applications is invited by the Olympic Committee it is unsuccessful. And what's galling is that some of the successful applicants barely qualify as sports at all.

All in all it's such a shame. The sport is desperately short of funding. Inclusion as an Olympic sport would do so much to raise its profile.

It really is a great sport to play.
 
I changed my shoes this evening and had 9 holes. Definitely a sport. Ended up 6 over off whites and 3 putted 3 times.
 
Whilst football is obviously my great sporting love, squash is the game I most enjoyed playing.

I used to play for about 15 years from my mid-twenties until I was around 40.

If you like individual sports it has everything. Skill, speed, athleticism, endurance, eye-hand coordination, mental agility....

And it is such a physically demanding sport. There were days when, without exaggeration, I could barely get out of bed after a competitive match the night before.

Sky used to give it great coverage in its early years but then started phasing it out until they dropped it altogether. I guess squash doesn't translate easily to television. The top professionals make the game look ridiculously easy with their court coverage and shot retrieval. Unless you've played the game it's hard to appreciate how much skill and athleticism is involved.

It's a great sporting injustice though that squash has never been accepted as an Olympic sport. Each time a new round of applications is invited by the Olympic Committee it is unsuccessful. And what's galling is that some of the successful applicants barely qualify as sports at all.

All in all it's such a shame. The sport is desperately short of funding. Inclusion as an Olympic sport would do so much to raise its profile.

It really is a great sport to play.


I used to play squash and loved it. Actually have a couple of trophies somewhere. One where I beat an arch enemy from high school in the final. Actually, that one is under my pillow. :whist:
 
I played squash, golf, tennis, badminton, cricket swimming in my life and now bowls but the only one I loved above all else was FOOTBALL and even now, at my age, if we were to have a buckshee game in a carpark, I would have to win at all costs, even if nothing was at stake!.
 
I am fond of watching NHL highlights on Facebook. My northern mate is a massive Bruins fans so is always posting stuff. To piss him off I sort of picked Minnesota Wild as my team but if I am truly honest, Bruins would probably be my choice.

I just really don't understand things in it. What is Icing for example?! Wtf is with the sheer amount of guys on each team?
 
Like Greavsie , I have played nearly every sport known to schoolboy and man .
My passion is football , cricket is just the best sport there is , badminton, tennis , table tennis , basketball , squash , , athletics ,( track and field ) ,
All were my sports of choice as growing ragamuffin .

Then came the years where women got in the way , ….
Then , when I found a way to combine the two , I took up sports of different kind which I suppose mutters will disregard and do a Walt on me and not allow ….Darts , Snooker . Pool , Fishing , and Shagging ! ,

At around thirty five I took up road running , and five a side competitive football .
The road running completely overtook me and I just couldn’t wait to get home from work and get out on the road .
It was like a drug . I was doing around five miles a night . Pushing myself to do it faster and faster .

The five a side football petered out into a precursor for a Friday night piss up with the lads .
We still played , but only amongst ourselves , from seven pm till eight , have a fag , get in the showers , dump the car at home , wet gear in the back , and crawl to the battle .

The bag was always lovely surprise in the morning when we re-entered sanity .

Waffled again . :sorry:
 
Bar the football i only watch the six nations & women's tennis. I've no interest in any other sport unless it's a big spectacle like the olympics.
 
What was your 5mile PB Walt?
I don’t know to be honest RD , it was always around forty / forty five minutes . I never actually logged my times but I had one of those Seiko watches , with a stop watch function that I used , just to try and get faster .
At first I used to jog and it took me well over an hour .
I kept to a same route that I drove around once and it was four point nine miles .
The watches we have now would have been brilliant back then .
I’ve got a FitBit I wear now for walking , and it tells me exactly how far I’ve walked and how long I’ve been out etc .
I know it’s four hundred and seventy steps to the pub .!!!!!!!
I really want to go back to that , …..running I mean , not the pub , . ( although the pub wins all the time now ! )
In my head I think I can do do it , but in reality the pub is the the more achievable .
I had both knees “resurfaced “ eight years ago because of wear and tear on them , football etc , and i am very wary of buggering them up again .
On the allotment , on a normal day , I will do around seven thousand steps , and it tells me I have climbed around seventeen flights of stairs , I’m not sure where it gets that from !!!!
it’s as flat as a pancake up there .

So I would do around Five miles in around Forty minutes . I suppose on average it would have been eight minutes a mile , or so .

I always wore a cut out bin liner under my tee shirt , I was always ten and a half stone back then ,
I’m thirteen and a half stone now and two inches shorter !!!!!
 
I don’t know to be honest RD , it was always around forty / forty five minutes . I never actually logged my times but I had one of those Seiko watches , with a stop watch function that I used , just to try and get faster .
At first I used to jog and it took me well over an hour .
I kept to a same route that I drove around once and it was four point nine miles .
The watches we have now would have been brilliant back then .
I’ve got a FitBit I wear now for walking , and it tells me exactly how far I’ve walked and how long I’ve been out etc .
I know it’s four hundred and seventy steps to the pub .!!!!!!!
I really want to go back to that , …..running I mean , not the pub , . ( although the pub wins all the time now ! )
In my head I think I can do do it , but in reality the pub is the the more achievable .
I had both knees “resurfaced “ eight years ago because of wear and tear on them , football etc , and i am very wary of buggering them up again .
On the allotment , on a normal day , I will do around seven thousand steps , and it tells me I have climbed around seventeen flights of stairs , I’m not sure where it gets that from !!!!
it’s as flat as a pancake up there .

So I would do around Five miles in around Forty minutes . I suppose on average it would have been eight minutes a mile , or so .

I always wore a cut out bin liner under my tee shirt , I was always ten and a half stone back then ,
I’m thirteen and a half stone now and two inches shorter !!!!!

Yeah but how tall are you!
 
I don’t know to be honest RD , it was always around forty / forty five minutes . I never actually logged my times but I had one of those Seiko watches , with a stop watch function that I used , just to try and get faster .
At first I used to jog and it took me well over an hour .
I kept to a same route that I drove around once and it was four point nine miles .
The watches we have now would have been brilliant back then .
I’ve got a FitBit I wear now for walking , and it tells me exactly how far I’ve walked and how long I’ve been out etc .
I know it’s four hundred and seventy steps to the pub .!!!!!!!
I really want to go back to that , …..running I mean , not the pub , . ( although the pub wins all the time now ! )
In my head I think I can do do it , but in reality the pub is the the more achievable .
I had both knees “resurfaced “ eight years ago because of wear and tear on them , football etc , and i am very wary of buggering them up again .
On the allotment , on a normal day , I will do around seven thousand steps , and it tells me I have climbed around seventeen flights of stairs , I’m not sure where it gets that from !!!!
it’s as flat as a pancake up there .

So I would do around Five miles in around Forty minutes . I suppose on average it would have been eight minutes a mile , or so .

I always wore a cut out bin liner under my tee shirt , I was always ten and a half stone back then ,
I’m thirteen and a half stone now and two inches shorter !!!!!
If it's 470 to the pub, how many is it to get home again?