Your Personal All Time Top 10 Sports Moments

The Game Room
21

I think you mean Ben Stokes :wink:

I didn’t see that one live, but I did see the end of the World Cup final a few weeks earlier, which was just about as inspired and insane as sport gets. To make it crazier I was flicking madly back and forth between channels because Federer and Djokovic were playing out their last-set tiebreaker at Wimbledon at the same time.

Sticking to events I actually saw as they happened:

  • Another Australian heartbreaker - the last day of the 2005 Edgbaston Test (I was listening to the end of the Trent Bridge Test on radio and tense doesn’t begin to describe it).

  • Makhaya Ntini kissing the turf at Lord’s after becoming the first black South African to get on the honours board.

  • The last day of the 2000 Lord’s Test - the four-innings-in-one-day game. Those were the days when the West Indies still had the hoodoo over England, and I wasn’t expecting things to change when England folded up in their first innings. They ended having to chase 188 against Ambrose and Walsh and Dominic Cork just barely got them home.

  • France’s comeback against the All Blacks in the 1999 Rugby World Cup. The phone went in the middle of it all and it was my rugby-mad friend screaming “Are you watching? Are you watching?”

  • Bath-Brive in the 1998 Heineken Final - one of those endings no-one would believe if you tried to script it.

  • A solo try by Arwel Thomas against Scotland some time in the '90s - he outjumped John Jeffery who was at least a foot taller than him.

  • Another French World Cup semi-final, against Australia in the first World Cup back in 1985. The game went back and forth for 80 minutes - Serge Blanco won it with a dive in the corner with no time left and half a dozen players horizontal on the ground.

  • Last Suspect’s Grand National in 1985. Don’t know why that one stuck with me but it did.

  • And the Benson and Hedges Final in 1983. I was there with my Dad, who is a lifelong Middlesex member. Essex made them look second-rate for most of the day - at one point they needed about 20 from 7 overs with 5 wickets left - but Middlesex pulled it off in the end. The game finished at about 8:45 - no lights in those days - with Daniel and Cowans bowling full throttle. We could barely see anything in the stands - I can’t imagine what it must have been like to bat.

22

2004 - OSU v St. Joseph, Elite 8[ul]
[li]Probably the height of OSU basketball in my lifetime, unfortunately. Went to San Antonio, but that game wasn’t nearly as fun as this one on TV.[/li][/ul]

2007 - Boise State v OU, Fiesta Bowl[ul]
[li]OU lost in deliciously entertaining fashion. Trick plays out the wazoo. A post game proposal. I became a fan of Boise State on this day.[/li][/ul]

2007 - OSU v Texas basketball, regular season[ul]
[li]One and done Kevin Durant gets beaten in triple OT by a scrappy OSU team.[/li][/ul]

2010 - USMNT v Algeria, World Cup final group game[ul]
[li]US needs a win, but Algeria is content to go home with a draw. US counters late to win.[/li][/ul]

2011 - USWNT v Brazil, Women’s World Cup Quarterfinal
[ul]A controversial penalty retake, extra time, the worst injury faking I’ve seen, the US tying it all up in injury time due to that faking, a shootout.[/ul]

2011 - OSU v OU, Bedlam Football (in person)[ul]Good guys triumph in a major ass kicking.[/ul]

2012 - OSU v Stanford, Fiesta Bowl (in person)[ul]
[li]Brandon Weeden v Andrew Luck. OSU wins to remind everyone that Bama doesn’t deserve to be in the National Championship[/li][/ul]

2013 - USMNT v Mexico, World Cup Qualifier (in person)
[ul]
[li]Dos a cero. Again. (Did he miss the penalty in 94’ on purpose? Probably not, but kept the scoreline)[/li][/ul]

2016 - OKC Energy v Rayo OKC, US Open Cup (in person)[ul]
[li]Local rivalry (well, Rayo lasted only one season, so not really). Tense as can be, goes to extra time and Energy win at the death[/li][/ul]

2018 - US v Sweden, Curling Gold Medal Match[ul]
[li]My favorite every four years sport. Nobody believed in them. Fun to stay up stupid late to drink and watch.[/li][/ul]

23

LOL. I think I gave away my history of watching the early seasons of CSI. :slight_smile:

24

  1. Last out of 2002 World Series (was a primary Angels fan as a child/20-something)

  2. Last out of 2010 World Series

  3. Warriors win 2015 NBA finals

  4. Warriors win 2017 NBA finals

  5. Last out of 2010 NLCS

  6. Edgar Renteria HR in 2010 World Series game 5

  7. UCLA wins 1995 men’s NCAA basketball title

  8. Warriors win 2018 NBA finals

  9. Angels win 2002 ALCS

  10. Last out of 2012 World Series

(Basically, football has never given me anything worthwhile or rewarding)

25

A lot of people are obviously posting their favourite team’s championship wins - and fair enough too, that’s the main reason we watch sports.

I think I have been unlucky (in one sense:p) - my football team has won several premierships, but they haven’t won a close one since 1967. The win is more a relief - ‘Whew! We didn’t blow it!’. I haven’t had that ecstacy of a last-second triumph - the 9th inning home run, the extra-time goal.

My team won in 2017 after a long drought - but the game was a blowout, and it was over half-way through the 3rd quarter. They also won in 2019, but that was over half-way through the 2nd quarter. Both pretty dud games, to be honest.
I was 6 in 1967, so missed that.

26

Just a couple of days ago, Shane Warne called Ponting’s decision to bowl after winning the toss the “worst decision ever, by any captain.”

27

I’m not really a sports fan, so will just mention four moments.
[ul][li] AlphaGo’s stone #37 stunned the world of go,with an unheard-of shoulder hit on the fifth line. Three and a half years later, Lee Sedol, perhaps the strongest human player in the world, retired from the game, distraught that A.I. Go would only get stronger and stronger.[/li][li] Lee Sedol had expected to win 5-0 in the famous 2016 match but ended up happy to win just the 4th game, salvaging a 1-4 defeat. In that game, Lee’s #78 stone, a wedge move, was played “by the Hand of God.” (IIUC this is the only game AlphaGo ever lost to a human.)[/li][li] More than five decades ago, my high school team scored a touchdown in the final minute to go ahead in our Thanksgiving Day game! With only seconds to go, the other team scored its own touchdown. In the very final seconds … our team scored again and won. (I’ll not name the high schools, to help preserve my anonymity. … Or perhaps this has already given my identity away? :eek: )[/li][li] Finally, since no one else has mentioned it, there was the time Willie Mays caught a fly ball.[/li][/ul]

28

Just an update to my Top 10 from recent History.
Glenn Maxwell. 201* vs Afghanistan in the 2023 World Cup.
Ok - it wasn’t the final - in the end it probably wasn’t the most important game (Australia would still have made the final series, win or lose).

But what Maxwell did can only be described as the sort of dayddream you have when you are an 8-year old. To play that innings that won the game from a near-impossible position, to do it while suffering severe cramping that at one stage made him fall flat on his back, to do it with basically no help from his partner (except moral support) - it was fantasy.

It finished at about 4am (Australia time), and I was so amped-up I was literally shaking, obviously sleep was out of the question, and I think that went for most of the cricket-obsessed fans in Australia.