This week Peyton Manning retired at the Denver Broncos Headquarters at Dove Valley. Number 18 saying goodbye to the game that he transformed for 18 seasons. I may have been a fan of the NFL since the mid 90’s, following the Broncos before the back-to-back Elway Super Bowls, but it’s only been the last few years I’ve fallen into the super fan category, largely because of Peyton. Continue reading Peyton Manning Retires
Peyton Manning could do it. Pete Sampras did it after winning the 2002 US Open; Rocky Marciano did it after defending his Boxing Heavyweight Championship in 1955 and John Elway did it after winning Super Bowl 33. They are all athletes who won the biggest event in their respective sports and promptly rode off into the sunset, cementing their status as legends by going out in the best way possible. Continue reading Riding off into the Sunset
The Golden NFL shield says it all. The historic milestone is almost here. The Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers will play the 50th Super Bowl this Sunday American time. To mark the occasion the NFL all season has turned their famous shield ‘gold’. What started out in 1967 as Super Bowl 1, after an agreement between rival leagues, the NFL and the AFL, ‘the merger’ created a game that has become so big that an estimated 120 million viewers will watch it just in American households. Continue reading Super Bowl 50
It inevitably happens to every athlete, in every sport. The mind is willing but sadly the body is not. Through years of repetition and in the case of the NFL, violent collisions, the body says ‘enough’ and father time appears at the door, ready to be let in.
I love America. I always have, ever since my first trip there in 1990 for the US Open in California. My mate ‘Swami’ and I went to Disneyland and rode Space Mountain. Our senses were being bludgeoned; everything was bigger, louder and faster. From looping freeways, to donuts for breakfast, it was excess personified. We’d gone from Chester Hill and Budgewoi to another Universe. Continue reading Why the Denver Broncos?