It's been a week of congratulation, celebration and utter admiration for evergreen NFL quarter-back Brett Favre. After an incredible 297 consecutive starts his longevity is already stuff of sporting legend, and rightly so. Favre holds many of the most precious records in his sport (including most touchdown passes ever thrown) but it's his venerability that attracts attention unlike anything else. The man is living testament to all those admirable qualities like integrity, grit, guts and determination.

But while we're getting all gaa-gaa over his achievements, there's at least two other sportsmen I can think of still competing at the highest international levels who, just like Favre, also happened to be doing so way back in 1992.

One, Ryan Giggs, has had an exemplary career bathed in awards and trophies, winning every major honour on offer, and continues to play for one of the world's most famous and successful football clubs, Manchester United. The other is a man whose career is even more familiar to us, yet his durability continues to barely raise an eyebrow.

An official "Good-On-You" goes to all who guess correctly. If you guess via search engine it's called "a Contador", i.e., "yes you can win, but you had to get outside help to do so". If you can't guess, the answer will appear right here tomorrow. About half a second before you give yourself an uppercut for not knowing...

In the meantime here's my most memorable international sports stories of 2010:

-THE ALSO-RANS WIN BIG IN AMERICA.

It was the turn of the try-hards with everyone's favourite underdog, the New Orleans Saints, clinching their first ever Superbowl (after 40-odd years of failure and nothingness), followed by the San Francisco Giants winning baseball's World Series for the first time since that franchise relocated from New York in 1954. Equally remarkable achievements given few would've rated either a realistic pre-season chance. The Saints have been so awful in past years their fans used to turn up to home games wearing paper bags on their heads, while the Giants only previous claim to fame was (the Ben Johnson of baseball) Barry Bonds. Now all that remains is The Cubs to break their 100 year hoodoo and Cleveland to win anything at all!

-ENGLAND ARE THE NEW AUSTRALIA

Yes the Ashes might still be (technically) alive but everything about this encounter points to the Poms' first win on Aussie soil in almost 25 years. Cock-a-hoop confident from the moment they arrived, England dominated in Brisbane, thrashed the hosts in Adelaide & could've retained the trophy in Perth, but alas it wasn't to be. With the series poised at 1-1 and two more Tests still to play in Melbourne and Sydney, the holders know they only need a drawn series to keep the urn anyway. To further ridicule Australia's decline into their lowest world ranking in decades, (just in case Ponting's lot still haven't realised they're now ranked #5 for a reason), the Poms are displaying the exact same swaggering arrogance that's epitomised Australia's recent (nigh) impregnable dominance of the sport. And quite frankly my Dear Ramsbottom, it's just frightfully fun to watch!

-THE TAMING OF TIGER

A year after he drove his life and career head first into the neighbour's fire hydrant, Tiger Woods has failed to find whatever it was that propelled him into golf's giddiest orbit. Let's be honest, he owned golf. The man was an on-course monster dominating opponents both physically and mentally - key word being "was". Since admitting his "sex addiction" he's lost everything - wife, kids, kudos, sponsors, reputation, honour, popularity, his #1 ranking and (in golfing terms the most dramatic defeat of all) his previous psychological hold on every other pro playing. Thing is they all now believe he is beatable, and they're proving it at every event he plays. I have only two wishes for TW, the first that he never again uses his dead Dad's voice in an advert to sell golf gear, and the second that he wakes up and sacks the morons who convinced him it was a great idea to do that in the first place.

-RAFA'S RETURN TO GREATNESS

When he limped out of Melbourne in January it looked like those troublesome knees had finally caught up with fomer #1 Rafael Nadal. If his failing body couldn't somehow reclaim the awesome court coverage so successful in defying Federer's total Slam dominance, then his career looked doomed. Victory at the French wasn't nearly the surprise his 2nd win at Wimbledon was, and by the time Flushing Meadow rolled around, Rafa had (again) firmly supplanted old rival Roger as top dog of mens tennis. From easily beaten to nigh unbeatable, it was a stunning comeback of Clijsters proportions. Nadal says the Grand Slam's impossible, but if any player's ever capable of emulating Laver, (at 25) he surely has a better chance than most...

The question was, "Who is the third guy"? Brett Favre's contribution to sport was globally recognised last week when injury finally curtailed his consecutive match-starting streak at 297. Another internationally achieving athlete already around in 1992 (when Favre began his career), and still going strong, is Man United's Premier League superstar Ryan Giggs. The third man we all know better than either of the aforementioned, although few acknowledge his longevity with any of the same reverence. Maybe this outpouring of admiration for Favre might now flow a little the way of a proud Samoan South Aucklander who in 1992, months before Brett threw his first NFL pass, won a bronze medal for his country in the Heavyweight division of the Barcelona Olympics.

Congratulations, DAVID TUA.

You, Brett Favre and Ryan Giggs - not a bad club to be a member of, is it?

The final few of my memorable international sporting moments of 2010:

-CHEATS, CHEATS AND EVEN MORE DIRTY ROTTEN CHEATS

Quite probably the most shameful thing about world sport's biggest scandals of 2010 is that no-one is/was truly surprised at the sheer scale of the ongoing skulduggery. More match-fixing in cricket, another Tour de France winner tests positive for drugs and a systematic salary-cap rort that'd been kept secret for 10 years are just some of the more notorious stories to emerge from 2010. But let's be honest here, every unexpected Pakistani loss is viewed as suspicious, drug cheats in cycling are as common as gravel rash and if the Melbourne Storm's playing roster didn't raise a regular eyebrow then the luxury speed boats the players got "given" every Tuesday certainly did! I really don't know what's worse - the loss of "face" for those involved when eventually exposed or the loss of "faith" out here in fan-land that any activity we watch is in fact truly "clean" and all who professionally participate (still) do so committed to some unwritten "code of honour" that isn't defined by how much cash is in the unmarked envelope.

- LEBRON DOES A MANCHESTER CITY
Whoever once said "money can't buy happiness" is possibly right. What's more certain though, (especially when using the twin cases of Miami Heat and Man City as obvious examples), is that money can't necessarily buy the happiness of a national championship. Despite unlimited amounts of available cash, neither the NBA's biggest superstar nor the world's richest football club have (as yet) been able to convert dollars spent into trophies delivered. In both cases, as equally public and high-profile as eachother, the fattest bank balance hasn't provided the balanced squad essential to either team's sporting success. You have to think that unless their respective season's end with each holding aloft something large shiny and silver, then the price of failure might just be the most expensive cost of all...

-VIVA ESPANA!

One of the greatest attacking squads ever assembled won FIFA's World Cup averaging barely a goal a game. Pragmatism dominated performance as the reigning European Champs finally broke their ever-long drought and achieved ultimate success at the planet's premier sporting event. The only thing worse than the final itself was the incessant drone of 90,000 cheap plastic carhorns, masquerading as some culturally vital musical accompaniment. Utter bollocks. When (FIFA boss) Sepp Blatter recently advised against any "gay activity" during the 2022 tournament in Qatar, I can only assume that he, like so many of us, is thinking of only one thing - do it Sepp, ban all them "vuvuzela" eh bloke?

-AND THE ULTIMATE WINNER IS...

-Teenage Aussie sailor Jessica Watson who won her own round-the-world-yacht-race sailing triumphantly into Sydney Harbour with full flotilla escort in tow. Certainly worth celebrating if anyone else had entered the event. Not quite the same magic anywhere on board though when the penny dropped that the fastest boat, was also the only boat. Pretending that this was somehow sport can be attributed entirely to the sad result of what happens to a once proud sporting nation when a mob of marauding Poms invade their isle before removing all resident dignity with a pants-down botty-smack of bumshellack proportions.

And quite frankly my Dear Ramsbottom, isn't it just frightfully fun to watch!