Never easy striving for the top

A concept that is not always obvious for all casual sports watchers (and occasionally even the supposed professional) to grasp is the simple, but not always obvious, difference in levels.One would sometimes encounter people who expressing how very impressed they are with, for instance, a certain individual in a team sport like rugby, cricket or football. The casual watcher may have seen a rugby player score tries or goals in a lower-level club match and would then go ahead and proclaim how this individual seem to be unfairly overlooked by the national selectors. Some commenters may even state such opinions based solely on match reports – while not necessarily taking into account how influential the contribution of earlier playmakers had been in creating the opportunity for the finisher to grab the headlines.The same phenomenon plays out in individual sports such as boxing, where fans would sometimes get all excited after seeing their guy dominate an outmatched opponent. Based on this performance, they might reckon their guy deserves the opportunity to challenge the world title holder. Boxing is a platform that especially brutally exposes “the truth” in the ring, as fighters test each other’s power, skill, speed, determination, preparation, resilience and strategy. The popular sayings “big fish in a small pond, but small fish in a big pond”, “there are levels” or “you don’t know S H one T about boxing” might apply, as many casual observers does not fully grasp the levels of competition on the worldwide scale of any particular sport.Everyone is entitled to their opinion and we all have freedom of speech. So banter, discussion and opinions are what keeps any sport interesting.In reality there are physical and/or mental limits to everyone’s abilities. Maintaining an unbeaten record all the way to the top and remaining unbeatable over many years is not the normal real-world experience for anyone below the truly elite level.More often it is the ones dedicated to their craft, who remains a student of the game, that continue to prevail. Once again using the boxing example, fighters like Floyd Mayweather have had to evolve and make adaptations – both during the course of a fight and the course of his career – in order to continuously compete with the best.In rugby terms, the insights of someone like Rassie Erasmus, for instance, in behind-the-scenes footage explaining the thought processes in his squad selections over the years has been quite revealing. The attitudes, work rate and dedication that separate those selected for Springbok squads in the era of Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber have set the standard the rest of the world now need to adapt to.

Never easy striving for the top

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Namibian Sun 2025-02-21

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Never easy striving for the top

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Namibian Sun 2025-02-21

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