When England's keeper Robert Green gaffed on that goal against the US at the World Cup I wrote it off as just that. A gaffe. His brain passed gas. Ka-ka happens and unfortunately it happened to Green on one of the biggest world stages in sport.
That's one of the problems with soccer. There's so little scoring when you muff it, it's a disaster, Compare that with hockey. A goaltender can miss a softie through the 5 hole but in a 6-3 game, win or lose, we'll give him a pass. Rajon Rondo goes up and over Pao Gasol in the second quarter of the NBA finals and embarasses the big Frencheman. 60 baskets later it's forgotten. The third inning 2 run homer served up by Roy Halladay. Forget it.
Over the weekend if was revealed that Green's real concern was that he was spurned by his main squeeze, He was suffering from affection rejection by lingerie model Elizabeth Minett who hails from Guelph Ontario which, if you connect the dots in a round about way, means Canada had hand in Green's bad hands against the Americans. He wasn't focused. His thoughts were with his gotchie gal instead of the ball.
Now, I don't know if that was the case. But I heard someone talking about it on the radio and the point was made that high end athletes are able to bury their emotions, block out their personal demons, man up and play their game. So Green's muff heard round the world could not possibly have had anything to do with his ruptured relationship with Miss Minett.
There are athletes who are assassins. Air Jordan and Kobe Bryant come to mind. But we're not all made of that kind of metle. I remember a Blue Jay executive asking me what I thought was wrong with one of his high end hitters. His average had plunged 30 points from the year before. I looked at him and said, "he got married and had a kid". The exec pointed a finger at me and said "bingo". The player's mind wasn't on the game. it was on the bride and the babe.
I recall a another athlete who spent entire games looking into the stands for his girlfriend. On the nights she showed up he was fine. On the nights she didn't he was crappy. Word was he was worried that she was trying to score while he wasn't.
I am convinced that dealin' with Elin has taken more off Tiger Wood's game than his absence from the course. There was a time I would have had him in the Jordan/Kobe category. That triggerman mentality has deserted him. 'Course with a half billion dollars riding on the settlement I'd be thinking fortune instead of fairway every minute of the day.
I've managed to take personal problems and bury them while I'm working. But not always. And while I was on the air my mind was wandering to places I didn't want it to go. I couldn't stop it. Happens to all of us. Death in the family, sick kids, financial problems, job security and yes even being dumped by the love of your life. You're trying to win back soccer superiority for the birth place of the game but you can't shake off thoughts of your former panty paramour.
Most of us don't work under that kind of pressure. Most of us don't have to expose ourselves to hundreds of millions of people watching our every action and reaction. England's keeper says he let his country down. And yes, he did. But if it was a creation of his infatuation that was making Green blue, I think most of us can understand.
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