I've been watching more of the Commonwealth games of the past couple of days and I've come to the conclusion that Australians are unbelievably good at sports. Really unbelievable. Like phenomenally good. I say this because I watched them totally cane everyone at swimming, produce mind-blowing performances at diving and then this morning totally kick hockey's ass.
An interesting fact about Australia: their hockey team is called the 'hockeyroos.' How awesome is that? Which brings me perfectly on to another thing about amazing Australian sporting stuff. During their gold medal penalty shootout this morning (which they won, duh) I heard the Australian hockey coach give possibly THE best advixce on how to take penalties I've ever heard. His pearl of wisdom was "Don't worry about feinting or dummying it, don't worry about the goalkeeper's movement just hit it at the target as hard as you can."
Now that is brilliant. Not only did it totally work for hockey, it works for football too. Or I assume any other sports with penalties. Its so simple but so genius. Just hit the target. When you really think about it, this is the method that stands the highest chance of success. If you over complicate your penalty by attempting to confuse or second guess the keeper your chances of missing are higher. But if you simply blast the ball at the target you have a much higher probability of scoring because at least its in the right are straightaway.
So the lesson I have learnt from the commonwealth games is in strategic terms always keep it single. Also that Australians are awesome.
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