Stryka’s BodyBlog

Yesterday I witnessed a display of courage, of fight, of never giving up against the odds. Yesterday was Anzac day here in Australia, a day in which we remember the courage and sacrifice first displayed by Australian soldiers in the landing at Gallipoli on the 25th April back in 1915.

It has become a tradition that the Australian Football League honours Anzac day with a match between the two clubs that lost the most players to the world wars. One of these happens to be my team

Yesterday barely two minutes into the game our only ruckman (think basketball centre for you non Australians) landed awkrawdly on his knee and is likely to miss the rest of the season. This meant that the ruck duties fell squarely on a young man by the name of paddy ryder who whilst has a phenomal vertical leap is about 30-40pds lighter to the strength required for the job.

Not only this but because their was no one else out of 44 players for the two teams Paddy was one of two that spent the entire 122 minutes of game time on the field.

Apparently the television commentators wrote him off straight away. Apparently he wouldn’t be strong enough, apparently the task would be too big, too long , too hard.

But on a day where the sacrifices made by our soldiers are honoured Paddy decided that the least that he could do to honour them would be to display a little bit of intestinal fortitude and stand and fight. And fight he did, all day long.

Paddy decided that he couldn’t bulk up 40pds instantly, he couldn’t control anything how big the other guy was or that the other guy had a backup and was getting more rest than he was.

But what he could control was how long he was prepared to work and how hard he was going to fight, through sheer guts and determination he was going to impose his will on the game, he decided he was going take personal responsibility for the job because their simply was no one else, he was going to own his world…. So he did, and his team won because in the dying minutes of the game they were still fighting when others had given up.

We cant control so many things in our lifes. We can either take ownership of the situation and deal with it and come out the other side as a champion or give up and live in mediocrity.

here is the last 10 minutes of the game. Right when the commentors have written off the Bombers. Ryder is number 30 (in the red and black)

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 3:39 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.