In the decade or so I've been making a living writing about sport, I've come across a lot of so-called "heroes". In fact, in sport it's an occupational hazard.

Now The Finktank doesn't know a hell of a lot about Yelena Isinbayeva other than she's Russian, does incredible things with poles and looks fantastic in not a lot. (Come to think of it, that would describe half the women I meet in clubs.)

The joke – or conspiracy theory, depending on how you look at such things – doing the rounds of water coolers, email and Facebook this morning was "how many Kangaroos will be going to the TAB to collect today" after their shock 34-20 defeat in the final of the, snigger, Rugby League World Cup.

Sport was always going to suffer in these new straitened financial times, and the International Olympic Committee is already feeling the pinch, a rather painful $90 million one, with medical/health goods manufacturer Johnson & Johnson pulling out of its sponsorship of the Olympic Games.

I've long been a fan of boxing, the sport. That is an important distinction to make from boxing, the circus.

Boxing, the circus, is what boxing, the sport, has sadly become in this day and age.

The redoubtable Hollywood actor Samuel L. Jackson says he will never make a golf movie because "people don't like to watch it on screen unless it's Caddyshack. That's the only one.

The Finktank discovers that sometimes it's just best to keep your thoughts to yourself.

Now The Finktank has met a few coaches in his time, and I can attest a lot of them are fairly charismatic, so it's easy to understand why they are employed (gainfully) as coaches in the first place.

After all, you can pretty much bet that no matter what the sport involved, 80 per cent of what a coach does is motivational.