Stanley Cup Game 1 only 1 day away!

Hockey is quite a new sport for me and I only really got into it about 5 years ago.  Of all the major American sports it was the last to catch on for me but now I am a huge fan.  Interesting side note:  my mother who lives in Brisbane Australia came to visit me in Boston 5 years ago for the first time and was obsessed with hockey which she watched for the first time! My interest in the Bruins was accelerated due to 2 main factors in the last few years:

1.  When I met my wife her brother, father and her sister's husband are all huge fans and I watched many games with them
2.  We bought a 50 inch HD TV and I could see the puck a lot clearer!

This season I had the fortune to buy into a share of Bruins season tickets with my brother in law and his cousin and I went to about 10 regular season games.  Then when the playoffs began we got the whole set of playoff tickets so I went to some great games in every series.  Now they are in the Stanley Cup which starts in Wednesday and we have tickets to all the games!  Talk about luck!

View from our seats Game 2 Bruins v Lightning which the Bruins won 6-5!



As mentioned a couple of posts ago I am going to wear an item of sports clothing from a team or individual that I follow to either support an upcoming game or to celebrate a big win (link to post here).  With the Stanley Cup coming up tomorrow today I am going to wear Bruins gear in support of their first Stanley Cup finals appearance in 21 years!  Maybe I will be good luck again and bring another title to Boston? (Since I lived here the Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics have won titles!)

Today's posts are brought to you by buddha!

(note the small transistor radio with which I listen to WEEI every morning)

Details of the sports fan challenge

OK in the previous post I explained my obsession with sports which spans 2 hemispheres.  Coupled with this obsession is another obsession which involves collecting sports paraphernalia associated with these teams.  This includes primarily items of clothing : hats, shirts, jackets, etc.  And I wear them almost every day!  Almost always I wear the clothing associated with the team that is playing that day or in commemoration of a great win the night before.  At the very least they have to be currently playing in their respective seasons. For instance once the Patriots are out of the running for the Super Bowl then all the associated clothing is packed away until the next season and I move on to teams that are still in the running.  As you can see from the previous post I have a lot of teams on my follow list so almost every day I can wear a different teams colors.

Therefore I came up with a idea for posts that would also give a glimpse into my sports world.  Every day (this is the goal!) I will post a photo of myself wearing clothing associated with a sporting team or individual that I follow.  The selection of the clothing will depend on whether they are playing a big game that day or to celebrate a great win the day before.  I will explain my reasons for the selection in the post.

Think I am up for the challenge?

This is how obsessed I am about sports!

For those of you that don't know me I am quite obsessed with sports.  Just ask my wife.  I could watch sports all day every day and pretty much not watch anything else.  Part of this obsession is the fact that I follow sports in multiple countries, in particular the US and Australia.  I grew up in Australia loving sports like cricket and rugby as a kid.  All through my life I have continued to follow these sports as best I could but now that almost all games are available on TV it has made watching them much easier.  Below I is a list of Australian sports and sporting teams that I follow closely:

CRICKET
Australian national team
Queensland Bulls

RUGBY LEAGUE
Australian National team (Kangaroos)
Queensland Maroons
Cronulla Sharks
Brisbane Broncos

RUGBY UNION
Australian National Team (Wallabies)
Queensland Reds

SOCCER
Socceroos (Australian National Team)
Brisbane Roar

Added to these teams I also follow Australian tennis, golf, track and field athletes, triathletes, swimmers, cyclists.

Since I moved to Boston I have latched on to the Boston teams like I grew up here and have supported them all my life (I have lived here for 12 years, never lived in another US city and have seen then Patriots, Celtics and Red Sox win titles in that time, my Boston friends consider me a good luck charm!).  Therefore to add to the list above are the Boston teams that I follow:

NBA
Celtics

MLB
Red Soc

NFL
Patriots

NHL
Bruins

Now to make the list even longer I also lived in England for 18 months (about 14 years ago) and while I was there became attached to a few teams in the English Premier League.  I lived in Sheffield so I followed those teams and Chelsea was favourite area of London so I also latched on to those teams.  Lets add those to the list:

Chelsea FC
Sheffield United
Sheffield Wednesday

So now the list is quite long and covers both summer and winter sports in the northern and southern hemispheres.  Therefore in the northern winter I follow sports such as basketball, hockey and soccer while in Australia I also follow cricket at the same time.  To keep all these sports I have a collection of apps that send me alerts, notifications etc.  I also set up a schedule on google calendar with all the teams that I follow (which includes rivals to my teams, for example Red Sox rivals: Yankees and Rays).

Every morning I check the calendar and the various apps that I have to catch up on sports that may have happened overnight (in Australia or southern hemisphere) and to see who is playing that day and to make arrangements for possible games that I may want to watch.  There is an introduction into my world of sports.  Just be thankful you aren't married to me (my poor wife handles it all very well).

What a great sports week!

OK I haven't written anything for a while but this week has really inspired me because it was such a great week in my sporting world.

First and foremost was the Bruins win last night in Game 7 v Tampa Bay which secured their first Stanley Cup finals appearance in about 20 years.  I have to admit of all the American sports hockey was the last that I caught on to.  It was so foreign to me and I have never even been ice skating before!  But over the years my interest has grown and I now rate it my second favourite American sport (sorry NFL is still the first).  I love the physicality and the spontaneity.  The last few years I have really latched on to the Bruins which was in part due to my wife's family particularly my brother in laws (wife's sister's husband and wife's brother) who are big fans.  This year I even had a share of season tickets (actually went to about 10 reg season games and 2 playoff games).  Now I have a chance to go and see a Stanley Cup game!

WANT TO GET SPORTS SCORES BY EMAIL OR TEXT MESSAGE FOR FREE?

We will send you sports scores and/or game notifications however you like (pre-game, in game, final scores, at the end of each period) for FREE!

Here are some of the sports that we follow:
- Baseball (MLB)
- Basketball (NBA)
- Ice Hockey (NHL)
- American Football (NFL)
- Rugby, Rugby League (NRL)
- Cricket (International, Domestic competitions)
- Tennis (ATP, WTA)
- Golf (PGA)
- Soccer (EPL, Champions League, Serie A, La Liga, Internationals)

Email me for details!
lostroadrunner@yahoo.com

My love of the Celtics extends back 26 years and 10000 miles away

For those of you that don't know I currently live in Boston.  This is Celtics country of course and the history here is amazing.  Need some reminding?  Take a look at these banners.

What you may not know is that I haven't always lived in Boston.  I was born in Sydney Australia and grew up in Brisbane Australia.  In the 1980s I was in high school in Brisbane which is about as far away from the NBA as you can get.  Basketball was not popular then and most boys played rugby league (including myself).  The kids that played basketball were considered weak and weirdos and if you didn't play rugby you were considered an outcast.   When I was in grade eight we had to do basketball for PE which involved various skill tests which counted towards grades for the semester.  I took it seriously and I ended up with one of the highest scores for the skill test (I was quite a good shooter when I was 13!).  My PE teacher was trying to start a basketball team and wanted to know if I would join.  He also wanted me to try out for a regional club (keep in mind not much competition in Brisbane at that time).  I said no way, I couldn't stop playing rugby or cricket for basketball I would have been ridiculed forever! 

But I still had an interest in basketball and every Saturday one game from the NBA was shown on Saturday mornings.  In the early 1980s the Celtics were a very successful team and therefore they were shown as the game of the week often.  This is when my 'secret' love of the Celtics began.  Then for my 13th birthday (Dec 21, 1984) when the Celtics were on their way to another NBA my father asked what I wanted for my birthday.
'I want a Larry Bird shirt'
'Who the hell is Larry Bird?', my father replied.
After I explained who Larry Bird was to my father he started the search for where we could buy one.  Eventually he found a sports store in the city.  One day we caught the train to the city center of Brisbane and the Wintergarden Mall and bought that shirt.  I wore it every Saturday when I watched the Celtics.  I wore it through the series that they lost in 84-85 to the Lakers and then when they won in 85-86 against the Rockets.  Of course in those days there was no Internet and I was so far away in Australia that the games weren't heavily publicized in the newspapers (unlike today).  After I finished high school and went to university my interest in the Celtics waned as I didn't have the opportunity to watch the Celtics as they weren't as competitive and I was focusing on other things like chasing girls and smoking pot.  But as most basketball fans know the Celtics were not a good team after Bird left in 1992 until recently.  These were very low years for a historically successful team.  I followed them when I could through the paper and the very rare times that they were on TV and I always had that Bird shirt which was held in safe keeping at my mother's house.

In 1998 I moved to Boston to take up a research job at Boston University.  I didn't pick this city I was offered a job there and I had applied to many through the USA.  Now I could see every Celtics game live!  I also got to go and see then live at the Garden!  In 1998 they drafted Paul Pierce but they were still a bad team by this city's standards.  During this time they were a bit of a joke and to get tickets was very easy.  People basically gave them away.  They had some success between 2001-02 to 2004-05 where they made the Eastern Conference finals but never really seriously threatened.  The years 2005-06 and 2006-07 were very grim but these were the first 2 seasons of Doc Rivers' coaching career here.  Then in 2007 they signed Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, two certain hall of famers, to join Paul Pierce who had suffered here for many years.  This really set the city on fire and they won that year for the first time since 1986. Next year they lost in the Eastern Conference.

The year 2010 was a real special year for me, I got married.  I was married in June and the Celtics were in the Eastern Conference finals again.  We were married on Cape Cod and the week before our wedding we stayed in a house there with our friends on family.  The Thursday night that we were there was the 7th game of the NBA finals - Celtics v Lakers.  I cold think of no better time to bring my treasured Larry Bird shirt back to the area where it belonged, during the week of my wedding with all my friends here and during a historic Celtics - Lakers game 7 of the NBA finals.  I arranged for my mother to bring the shirt with her from Australia, she was reluctant because the shirt reminded her of my father who passed away 12 year ago.  But I wore the shirt that night (it still fits me believe it or not).  The Celtics lost that night and we were very disappointed.  But wearing that shirt made me feel like that little kid who grew up in Brisbane Australia.  Now that little kid lives in the city of his favourite basketball team and got to see them win their first championship in 2008 since he was a kid in 1986.  Coincidence?