Wednesday 10th April 2010, Laureus Sports Awards were held in Abu Dhabi. Laureus Sports award are the most prestigious awards in world sport, essentially the sports world’s Oscars www.laureus.com
Laureus promotes the use of sport as a tool for social change and celebrates sporting excellence.
Laureus’ core concept is simple, brilliant and daunting: to create global awards that recognise the achievements of today’s sports heroes; to bring sportspeople together; united in achievement but divided by sporting code and then, once that community is brought together, put their reach and the support and investment of Laureus’ Founding Patrons and Partners to work by supporting a message that can help social projects around the world who are using sport as a tool for social change. That message, simply, is Laureus Sport for Good.
We were lucky enough to be apart of the day, all be it a very, very small part. We were asked to conduct a football (soccer) clinic for a group of local schools children as part of the sport for good foundation. We were told some of the visiting sporting super stars would be joining the session, we weren’t told who, just to expect some sporting royalty and to get them involved in the session.
It was a lot of fun, challenging at times as some of the children didn’t have the best English and my Arabic is not that great. I am not sure if the school kids actually knew who a lot of the sports stars were, but we were blessed to have some of the all time greats join us on the pitch.
Great Australians such as Layne Beachley, Cathy Freeman and Dawn Fraser, Dawn still gets around the football pitch quite well.
The legend Daley Thompson, and rugby greats Butch James, Morné du Plessis and the great Hugo Porta also joined us. They were all great people and great fun, in this clip you will see Hugo Porta the Argentine Rugby legend show his soccer skills, you can see why he has been described as Argentina’s greatest ever Rugby player.
The only downside of the event was unfortunately we couldn’t get tickets to the event unless we wanted to pay $5000 USD, somehow my 100 first grade games with Wagga Tigers Football Club didn’t open too many doors….
