Sport
Sport plays a major part in Footrot Flats. Wal plays all sorts of sports including cricket, golf, fishing, rugby union, tennis and many more. The dog often plays with Wal and an ongoing joke in the strip is how Wal can never beat his little brother Rex in any sport.
Wal plays for the Raupo rugby club as a hooker and is often seen playing and training in the strip. At one point Wal was replaced by a younger man as he was getting too old, but the younger player wasn't as good. The final few strips ever drawn involve an unlikely chain of events which culminate in Wal somehow scoring a try against a touring international rugby side.
In the cricket season Wal plays for an unknown team as an all-rounder, although he is sometimes pictured as the wicket keeper. Cooch often plays cricket with Wal and so does the dog, usually fielding in the slips or in the covers.
Cooch also plays golf with Wal who has a homemade course on his farm. Cooch is better than Wal at golf, even though the course is very hard (the first hole is a par 14). When they do play on a real course Cooch usually wins. Wal claims that the trees are on Cooch's side.
Wal also occasionally plays tennis with Cheeky Hobson and fights for her affections with Nigel Erkstine, another member of the tennis club. The dog is usually the ball boy.
Wal and Cooch frequently fish in various ways: whitebaiting, long line fishing, and most often floundering.
Other sports that get mentioned in Footrot Flats are boxing, polo, soccer, squash, and shooting.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“Every American travelling in England gets his own individual sport out of the toy passenger and freight trains and the tiny locomotives, with their faint, indignant, tiny whistle. Especially in western England one wonders how the business of a nation can possibly be carried on by means so insufficient.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“How long, then, Catiline, while you abuse our patience? How long is this madness of yours to make sport of us?”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)