For me:

As a player: When I was 8 years old playing for my primary school team, in a tournament for South Leicestershire we were all 8 or 9 playing against kids of 10 or 11 who were much bigger than us. We arrived a player short and had to borrow a player from another team, we then continued to win every game 1-0, somehow reaching the final.

In the final we played this team who were all older and bigger than us, I can actually remember one of the players looking at us, laughing, then saying "we should beat these easy!" Anyway, we got battered but managed to stop everything, I was playing as a defender and gave one of the games of my life, not as much as my mate who was in goal though. We somehow held on for 0-0. We did eventually lose on penalties, with my mate in goal breaking his arm saving a shot. Even though we ultimately lost in the final I can't remember ever feeling so amazed and proud by how close we came.

As a supporter: In a similar vein in which losing in many ways added to the romanticism of the event. This goes only back to May this year and the 2010 Football League Championship Play-offs. In which my team (Leicester City) came from 2-0 down on aggregate away to Cardiff, one of the best teams in the league, to lead 3-2. We ultimately lost, again on penalties, but as the actual comeback happened and our 3 goals either side of half-time was just ecstasy.

Mine would be more a general one, but it occasionally happens in football matches, and happened in my last game actually. A situation arose where I spotted the opposition full back was receiving the ball from his goalkeeper with his back to the rest of the play. The ball looked like it was slightly underhit and so I nipped in and pick pocketed him. 2 or 3 seconds later after skipping past a couple of centre backs and having played the perfect 1-2 with our right winger I was through on goal and squared the ball to an attacking midfielder who had a simple tap in. In a nutshell what I mean really is those moments where you deliver a crucial contribution in a match but it all happens so fast you can barely remember quite what happened, you're just left with that immediate feeling of having done something great. Which is awesome.

I'll come back to the supporter one. Need to give that some thought.

5 favorite moments:

1. Texas beating USC in the Rose Bowl in 2005. This is not just the best football game I've ever seen but the most I've had invested in one because I had nearly everyone of my friends tell me that Texas would get blown out of the Stadium and I kept saying that Vince Young would carry them through and he did. I still get chills when I watch him run in on 4th down for the winning score. The whole stadium knew he was going to do it but USC couldn't stop it.

2. Dallas beating Buffalo in Triple Overtime to win the Stanley Cup in 1999. This would have been number 1 if it was a home game and I'd been there but it was in Buffalo. Such an agonizing game but we won in the end and I saw my favorite team in my favorite sport (at the time) win a championship.

3. Dallas beating the Detroit Red Wings in Game 5 of the 1998 Conference Finals. Detroit was up 2-1 for most of the game but Guy Carbonneau scored the game tying goal with about a minute and a half left in the game. It was in old reunion arena which had no boxes and was just 17K fans packed in tight. To this day I've never heard a louder building in my entire life. The Stars won 5 minutes into overtime when Langenbrunner put a goal passed Osgood from center ice. They went on to lose the series in 6 but I'll always remember this game.

4. Vanderbilt beats Florida in 2007. My last year at Vanderbilt I went to one of the only basketball games I went to while I was at Vanderbilt. Florida was number 1 at the time so it was a fairly big ticket and I got there fairly early but still got crap seats. Still Vandy built an early lead and was in control of the game. This is the 2nd loudest I've ever heard a gym and Vanderbilt was on fire. We ended up winning by double digits and we rushed the court. Florida went on to win the national championship that year for the 2nd time but we fucking beat them (we would later get fucking job out of the NCAA tournament on a terrible call against Georgetown in the sweet 16).

5. This is a tie. Both are on different sides of a loss. The first is the 1999-2000 Stanley Cup Finals where Dallas lost in 6 games to NJ. That was my dad and I's 2nd year with Season tickets (right after the winning year). Ed Belfour had carried us through the entire playoffs including a superior Colorado team in a tough 7 games for the 2nd time in two years. But he had his only bad game of the playoffs in game 1 and we never really had the fire power to get back in. Game 5 we won in triple overtime to send it back to Dallas for game 6 where we needed another win. It was a great game and it ended up going to double overtime. Jason Arnott finally scored the series clincher for NJ (which is bullshit because he should have been ejected in the first overtime for sitting astride a player who was wearing a mask because of a healing jaw that had been broken and deliberately cross checking his head into the ice) and I heard the stadium go silent as we watched them present the Stanley Cup to NJ and watched Scott Stevens win the Conn Smyth (again bs not only because he wasn't the best player on his team but Ed Belfour deserved it even in a losing effort because he put the entire Stars team on his back). Still a very cool moment and bittersweet.

The flipside was in 2005 when I went to Arkansas to watch Vanderbilt play there. It was the 2nd game of the season and Vandy was kind of excited because we still had Jay Cutler and thought we could go somewhere. Arkansas was supposed to have a good year (although USC had killed them the week before) and we were underdogs. Out of the over 70,000 people in the stands maybe 100 were Vanderbilt supporters. Me and my Cousin were sitting in the upper deck and we were the only ones within 50 yards of us who were Vandy fans. Well we hung around and hung around and went ahead with a minute and a half left. Soon into Arkansas' attempted comeback drive with no TOs left they threw and interception. The whole stadium went from excited and loud to totally silent in a matter of seconds. You could have heard a pin drop in there. And my cousin and I celebrated like mad and then got the fuck out of there.

Those are my top 5. There are several other cool memories I have but these are the best ones.

Australia qualifying for the World Cup is up there for me. I still get goosebumps when I see that Aloisi penalty.

AC Milan winning the Champs League in 03.

Italy winning the '06 World Cup


Alternatively, here are my sporting heartbreaks.

Italy losing the '00 Euro Cup to France.

Parramatta losing the NRL finals in '01 and '09

Chelsea losing the Champions League final in '08

I don't think anything will come as close to Milan losing the Champions League final in 2005, though. I still can't watch that replay. I don't even like to talk about it.

Salt Lake City olympic hockey finals, Vancouver olympic hockey finals and Eberle's tying goal in the World Juniors in the semis against Russia a couple years ago with seconds remaining.The Oilers run was great, but good god losing that last game sucked hard.

corrections, where you at the game against the Wings or just watching?

My all time favourite moment in professional sports was being at the Canada/Russia hockey game in the 2010 Olympics. Holy god was that nuts. Also went to the Germany game and got the whole section around us to boo Pronger everytime he touched the puck.

As for personal experiences, I had a bunch from hockey, including scoring a huge game tying goal in the last minute of a tournament game. The best would have to be the game that I missed because of a back injury and my team was losing 5-1 going into the third. They clawed back to a 5-5 game and with about 8 seconds left one of my teammates shots just snuck through and barely crossed the line. I was behind the net and was the only one who knew it was in for a good couple of seconds.

as a player: 3 ymca league titles despite other teams having 2-3 players who were supposedly better than me (guys who started on the school team while i was 6th man). 2 of them included game clinchers. i was proud.

as a spectator: Colts winning the AFC title against the Pats then winning the title. Pacers going to the finals in 2000 and taking the Bulls to 7 in the 98 eastern conference finals.

I should probably add the '06/'07 Ashes to memories and the '05 Ashes to heartbreaks.

Also my earlier memory of cricket the 1999 semi-final of the world cup between South Africa and Australia. Holy shit, what an ending!

this

My dad always swears that game was fixed.

I dont think anything will ever beat the Sox winning in '04. Shit was nuts.

also, on my junior varsity soccer team sophomore year we were playing a team by far better than we were--they had talent at every position and we only had adequate skill at like half of ours--and i scored from about thirty yards out on a line drive to the top left corner that curved just around the goalie's fingertips and we tied 1-1. a win would've been nice considering their goal came off a poor clearance on a corner, but nonetheless it felt good. probably my best personal sporting moment/display of individual skill/goal ever.

As a player: I was playing right back for junior varsity in 10th grade, and we had a jv vs varsity game, and i drew the assignment of guarding their most talented player... i always took pride in my abilities as a defender but i don't think i ever played better than that day, i took the ball away from him on a number of occasions, even though he was an incredibly skilled dribbler and had speed/acceleration i couldn't dream of matching (he went on to get a scholarship to play for usc)... the varsity coach was so impressed he invited me to try out for the varsity team next practice, but it would take me another year to make it

As a spectator: Robert Horry's game winning shot in Game 7 of 2002 Western Coference Finals between Kings and Lakers

Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. Tied in the 9th after Endy Chavez took away a home run from Scott Rolen, the most improbable Cardinal--Yadier Molina--hits a two-run home run to make it 3-1. Then, with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th, Carlos Beltran a.k.a. Cardinals pitching SLAYER is struck out by the greatest pitch of all time, by Adam Wainwright. Holy shit. Then the Cardinals win the World Series.

My dad and I attended the 2001 University of Michigan/Michigan State football game when Jeff Smoker threw a touchdown pass to TJ Duckett with no time on the clock. Loudest/craziest thing I've ever been a part of. I get chills just thinking about it. Listen to these UM radio announcers cry like little girls:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoFZIBY-IVU