Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James were all legends (some lawmen, others rebels) of the Wild West, often portrayed in some of the classic Western films of old.
They were tough, rough and hard-nosed, opportunistic, which they had to be in order to survive.
They would probably have made great rugby players, as a lot of rugby activity nowadays might resemble the wild west!
It is interesting that rugby speaks of ‘try’, where a ‘try’ is worth more than a penalty, and ‘knock’ (which implies dropping the ball forward) is not seen as desirable, as what we wish to consider in this article is helping children to learn about trying, to take opportunities when they go knocking.
We must help youngsters to take opportunities when they come – not least as opportunities will pass. Mikel Oyarzabal, who scored five goals in eight World Cup matches as his Spanish team finished victorious, recently revealed in a BBC sports article that his hunger to score goals began when he was a youngster playing a different sport.
It reported that he said "I used to play hockey and I scored many goals. I always had this voice in my head, 'It doesn't matter if you missed one - there will be more'."
He knew opportunities would come and he would make the most of them. Indeed, he added, "I could smell goals, and that voice was always in my head." Such successful strikers will always have the view that there may not be lots of opportunities so they would have to make each one count. When the opportunity comes knocking, we must take it. If not, we take the next one!
However, we must also help our youngsters not only to take them but more importantly to make them. They cannot just wait for them to come by but they must be willing and able to create them. Cricket to a certain extent teaches that powerfully. A batter will know that there will come a bad ball from a bowler at some time (while the inverse will apply to a bowler facing a batsman) but he will also endeavour to try to create a situation whereby the bowler bowls a bad ball, or a ball in the place that suits the batter. The bowler sets a field according to where he wants the batter to hit the ball but the batter will look to make those field placings redundant. They have to make opportunities.
- In Full: Nineteenth post-cabinet press briefing: July 05, 2022
- Muzarabani eager for Chevrons to qualify for Australia 2022
- R. Kelly sentenced to 30 years in sex trafficking case
- Cops Arrested For USD 10 Fraud
Keep Reading
In effect, what this is saying is that what we may lack, we need to use as an incentive – each of us will have to have a little more drive than others, a stronger urge, an open mind, a willing spirit. The lessons learnt in school sport about opportunities wear well in the other areas of our lives. To make and take opportunities, we must have belief, passion, timing. Rather than bemoan the fact that we have no opportunity, we need to look for them, create them, initiate them, then use them fully.
We may be familiar with the story of a man who was stuck on his rooftop in a flood, praying to God to be rescued. A man in a rowboat came by and called to the man on the roof to jump in but the stranded man shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m waiting for God to save me.”
Later a motorboat came by and the same conversation ensued, with the same result. A helicopter also came by and offered to lift him free, but the man’s response was steadfastly the same, so the helicopter reluctantly flew away. The man eventually drowned and when he went to Heaven, he complained to God that, despite his faith, He had not saved him, to which God replied, “I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?” The man had literally and metaphorically missed the boat; he had not taken the opportunity, not once but three times. Indeed, we do not need to call on God for opportunities – we must see them when they are in front of us, be it in sport, relationships, work, wherever. It becomes a sad story if we do not take them firmly.
In a previous article, we referred to the age-old ‘knock knock’ jokes. We are not knocking them but we are dealing with kids here (though not Billy the Kid). We need them to keep on knocking on the door of opportunities before they are “knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door”, like the drowning man in the story above. The trailer for the film ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ (which used the Bob Dylan hit song “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” in it) had the line that the main characters were “legends in their own time – but time was running out”. Opportunity knocks for our children; will they open that door? We must prepare and equip them to do so, before it is too late. Picking up on rugby, we need to try and be converted to teach and coach our youngsters not just to take but to make opportunities. Knock knock. An opportunity is knocking. Hello?
