blonde poker forum

I was just thinking about how different things are now for professional sports people.

My nephew has just broken through to the 1st team squad of a top premier league rugby team, it’s all about mental and physical training now and the correct dietary requirements.

Whereas back in the late eighties and early nineties I had a mate who was first division  then premier league, footballer and regular England squad player, a mate who was a regular England rugby player and a guy who was (still an amateur sport then) a England squad field athlete.

They all had one thing in common – very little training – no dietary – no mental coaching. They also loved a good time. They were also winners.

They all had talent and bags of ability – and the comradeship of going on the piss with your mates knowing whatever happened, it stayed within the circle.

How things have changed – and yes they were world class players in their time, would they make it in today’s era – certainly.

So you're mates with Gazza, Mikey?

It's like poker. In 2004 I discovered poker and by 2005 I had read about 10 poker books and read a poker site called pokertips.org. I was pretty determined and I am confident that I was in the best 0.01% of the world at that point as a poker player. Where would determination, reading 10 books and a website get you in 2018 within 12 months?

It's quite likely that people born in the 80s that ended up being the best in their area of expertise would have had the best chance of success in the modern era, it's just they would have had to work a lot harder than they were in their old setting.

I watched an after dinner speech given by Bill Beaumont a few years ago where he talked about the difference between rugby players then and now.

Some of his stories about what they got up to the day they landed in Australia the night before a big game were incredible. They were still elite athletes and no doubt most of them would still make the elite today albeit a lot quicker a lot fitter and with far fewer funny stories to tell.

i think a lot will have been weeded out due to the mental game needed to be in the elite nowadays

ballotelli, ravel morrision, taraabt may well have legends in an era where people like paul merson where able to bevvie their way through games / seasons / careers on talent and a bit of charisma alone. where as i think a lot of the people who thrived in a slack era might not have made it in ultra focused professional set ups where every small edge needs to be taken just to stand still relative to the talent coming up behind.

Bill is a very funny bloke - we have had a few beers over the years. No I do not know Gazza - never come across him in a personal capacity, in the mid eighties through to 2000 I use to own a publishing and sponsorship company - so I have crossed paths with more sports people than I can remember - My monday, weds, and friday nights rolling into saturday morning was spent in pubs, restaurants and clubs and some notorious dives.

An interesting night would be when you had the rugby players and the footballers in the same pub, the majority of the footballers were from working class backgrounds - council estates and the rugby lads would be on the whole be well educated and have other jobs in the city or such like - Rank Xerox at one time employed 40+ rugby players who never did any work just picked up their pay checks (still semi professional in the eighties) nobody would mix until they had half a dozen pints then it become a partie - the rugby boys on the whole would out last the footballers.

That said I use to outlast them all.

Interestingly if you really wanted a piss up, lasted 2 days, the cricket team down under would slaughter everybody.

So its kind of funny really when you ask people to name great players from all sports you always get a mention of players from that era - some of who have left the party on a Saturday morning only to be playing at the highest level on Saturday afternoon.

Christ I could mention loads of incidents, fights and a donkey but I would have to redact the names and places.

They were  the good old days.