National Pride
I have often wondered how much pride people take in pulling on your Country's sports jersey. I can't imagine that there is any greater feeling than representing the country that you are born in. Yet, there seems to be many an occasion where a player is merely going through the motions and are more or less playing for their national side because they have to rather than actually wanting to.
I find it very hard to watch the English football (soccer) team as they never seem to have any passion about what the shirt should mean to them. The fans pay a lot of money to buy tickets to watch the team, to follow them around from tournament to tournament and also spend fortunes on buying replica gear. The fans want to see a committed and passionate performance from the players but all too often that is lacking from them.
The All Blacks are a rugby team that I follow and you can see straight away that the players are excited to pull on the famous black jersey and represent their country. Maybe it is a difference of sporting codes. Rugby teams in general seem to always play their hearts and very rarely do the fans leave a game questioning the commitment and pride of the players.
For me, pulling on that National jersey should be a thing of pride and and also spur the person wearing the shirt to give their all. Maybe there is just too much money in sports for people to be playing for the right reasons or has National pride gone out the window?
I find it very hard to watch the English football (soccer) team as they never seem to have any passion about what the shirt should mean to them. The fans pay a lot of money to buy tickets to watch the team, to follow them around from tournament to tournament and also spend fortunes on buying replica gear. The fans want to see a committed and passionate performance from the players but all too often that is lacking from them.
The All Blacks are a rugby team that I follow and you can see straight away that the players are excited to pull on the famous black jersey and represent their country. Maybe it is a difference of sporting codes. Rugby teams in general seem to always play their hearts and very rarely do the fans leave a game questioning the commitment and pride of the players.
For me, pulling on that National jersey should be a thing of pride and and also spur the person wearing the shirt to give their all. Maybe there is just too much money in sports for people to be playing for the right reasons or has National pride gone out the window?
