Last month saw the retirement of two of the greatest sportsmen of our times, Adam Gilchrist and Brett Favre.  You don’t see players like that anymore and you wonder if you ever will.

Players who give 100% when they step on the field but will never cross the line of sportsmanship. Adam hit the ball as hard as anybody ever has in the history of cricket, but he walked if he knew he was out. He never needed an umpire, he was his own umpire.

Half way across the World in Green Bay, there was similar sadness as one of the greatest football players of our time, and possibly the greatest quarterback in the history of the game, retired. Bret Favre finally was not going to come to office after 17 straight years.

'Understand this is not a receiver or a running back. This is the one player who all the eleven opponents are gunning for play after play'


Right at the beginning let me state my own biases, which does not mean that what I state is not exactly what it is. I am not only a Packer Fan but a Stockholder (Yes, you fans of other professional teams, you will never have anything like this with your teams. Green Bay Packers is a non-profit organisation owned entirely by its fans).

Brett’s first start was when I first came to Milwaukee in 1992 and he has never stopped since then until now. What is so incredible about that? This is Football. In other Sports you can get injured every now and then, but in the NFL you are lucky if you can leave the field at the end of the game without being hurt.

This is the closest thing to war we will ever see on a sports field. You see players in soccer (and please don’t call it football, it is Soccer, a sport made for high school girls) writhing in pain, as if they would die if they were to trip in the field. Now imagine four 300 pound lineman hurtling at you play after play and each of them wanting nothing more than to rip you apart. And many times they do get to you.Brtett

And that is what makes Brett’s record of consecutive starts all the more remarkable. It is very difficult for most football players to go through so many games without injuries and it is rare for players to go through an entire season without loosing a single game to injury. Now imagine 17 seasons without missing a start. Now again, understand this is not a receiver or a running back. This is the one player who all the eleven opponents are gunning for play after play.

There are some of us who call in sick when we catch a cold. This guy had many excuses to call in many a time. Battered week after week, he showed up every Sunday to work.  And no, he was not impervious to pain. In fact at one point in his career, he was taking Bicatin like it was candy.

Physical pain is one thing. But how do you explain it when he stepped on the field two days after his father died. Brett was very close to his dad. It's even hard to imagine what must have been going through his mind. That Sunday we saw the greatest display of quarterbacking we're ever likely to see.

Oakland lost that game before they even stepped on the field. Brett was not playing that day for anybody on this planet. This guy played through his wife’s cancer and through deaths in his family. Sometimes you had to ask, will this guy ever get a break.

His story is so inspirational, we really don’t need to look at the stats. But why don’t we. Most career yards, most touch downs, most attempts and most completions. That guy has more 30 TD seasons than anybody ever. Fifteen consecutive 3,000 yard seasons. Nobody comes close.

Dan Marino was a great pure passer and Peyton Manning will also be known as one. John Elway was the great comeback artist and Unitas was a spectacular quarterback in his own time. Terry Bradshaw was, of course, a great leader too and so was Bart Starr.

But if you ever wanted a quarterback who could lift his whole team on his shoulders and lead the charge from the front, you will not find a better quarterback in the whole history of the NFL.