Thought of the Day: Losing doesnt make you a loser

I grew up in a very closed society with very little knowledge of the outside world, something that is (sadly) best reflected in my childhood facination with the Brisbane Bears, an Australian Rules football team that started playing in the national competition in 1987.

There had always been State of Origin football, in which the best players of various states squared off, but this was a yearly spectacle as opposed to a weekly showing.

Almost all teams before the Bears derived from suburbs within twenty kilometres of my front door rather than from two thousand kilometres away, making them something of an oddity indeed.

Looking back, I feel their mystique was added to in no end by the fact that they wore Maroon.

The other fascinating thing about the Bears was that they almost always lost, which was also exciting in an odd way, probably showing how I didnt actually understand football but was just fascinated by the fascination surrounding it.

I remember tuning in on Sunday afternoons, wondering how much they would lose by, or how they could manage to stuff-up and possibly win.

These days my interest has passed from Brisbane (now the 'Lions' after a merger with Fitzroy when the league decided there wasnt enough room for two crap teams) to the Bangladesh Tigers, International crickets version of the Bears.

Though Bangladesh's position as a joke has recently been threatened by Zimbabwe, this is mostly due to Zimbabwe's administrators and politicians ability to drive every decent player from the country rather than Bangladesh's improvement.

That being said, Bangladesh did improve considerably while 'Aussie' Dav Whatmore was coach, so much so that he left the team, thereby creating stability in the universe.

Still, I tune in to watch Tiger games whenever I can and talk about their performance with my Bangladeshi neighbours with interest and loyalty.

The most recent of their games (against Pakistan) was a fairly predictable performance, with most batsman getting themselves out despite facing an average-at-best bowling attack, aside from Mahmudullah.

Yes, Mahmudullah. That is his name, and if I ever knew of a reason to get excited about a sportsman outside talent, its their name. All sportsmen have a nickname or name to make them more familiar to fans (think 'Jordan', 'the Don', 'Plugger' etc) and Mahmudullah has his marketing all in order.

Think of the character McLovin from the movie 'Superbad'. So impressed were the cops with his name that they took him out drinking.

So, not only does this bloke have a memorable name, but he is also a good player on a rubbish team, giving punters and strange kids from the suburbs of Melbourne another reason to tune in on a Sunday.