Night Owls
The news that Highlander midfield back Jason Kawau got assaulted last Saturday (at 4.20 a.m.) continues a fascination I have with so-called professional sportspersons in this country who seem to have trouble sleeping.
Call me old-fashioned, but back in another lifetime when I was fit, healthy and training my arse off in the pursuit of sporting endeavour, recovery and sleep were two of the most important things in life. Boring maybe, but necessary as training (hard) with a lack of sleep usually resulted in poor training and in some cases, sickness as the body became run down.
So it's reasonably impressive that Mr Kawau, in the middle of the Super 14 season, can be shakin' and groovin' 'til all hours of the night - note I'm making the perhaps dangerous assumption here that it wasn't a team training exercise as most of his team-mates were in Auckland having just completed a lesson from the Blues earlier in the evening. And I hasten to add I'm not assuming alcohol was involved - at least on Kawau's part - if it were, I'm sure we'd hear all about it a la an Eric Rush or Mils Muliaina story.
But what is it with professional sportsman and staying up all night? I fondly remember the case of an All Black who, after a preseason game with the Crusaders in Greymouth got on the turps and turned up pissed as a fart (obviously having not gone to bed) at the start line of the Coast to Coast at 5 a.m. the next morning. Or the reasonably well-known ex-All White who is/was a poker regular at Sky City and would quite happily sit at the poker tables until 3 in the morning on a Thursday or Friday night despite having a game of soccer to play (that presumably he was being paid for) in the weekend.
As I say, it's a fascination - people paid to play sport who during their competition season seem to think peak performance is not affected by the hours they keep. Wasn't in any of the training books I read.
Call me old-fashioned, but back in another lifetime when I was fit, healthy and training my arse off in the pursuit of sporting endeavour, recovery and sleep were two of the most important things in life. Boring maybe, but necessary as training (hard) with a lack of sleep usually resulted in poor training and in some cases, sickness as the body became run down.
So it's reasonably impressive that Mr Kawau, in the middle of the Super 14 season, can be shakin' and groovin' 'til all hours of the night - note I'm making the perhaps dangerous assumption here that it wasn't a team training exercise as most of his team-mates were in Auckland having just completed a lesson from the Blues earlier in the evening. And I hasten to add I'm not assuming alcohol was involved - at least on Kawau's part - if it were, I'm sure we'd hear all about it a la an Eric Rush or Mils Muliaina story.
But what is it with professional sportsman and staying up all night? I fondly remember the case of an All Black who, after a preseason game with the Crusaders in Greymouth got on the turps and turned up pissed as a fart (obviously having not gone to bed) at the start line of the Coast to Coast at 5 a.m. the next morning. Or the reasonably well-known ex-All White who is/was a poker regular at Sky City and would quite happily sit at the poker tables until 3 in the morning on a Thursday or Friday night despite having a game of soccer to play (that presumably he was being paid for) in the weekend.
As I say, it's a fascination - people paid to play sport who during their competition season seem to think peak performance is not affected by the hours they keep. Wasn't in any of the training books I read.
Labels: opinion
posted by Rob Crawford at 6:20 AM
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