The Foot On The Throat

At the Victorious festival recently, I was talking to one of my pals Danny J who always reads my blogs, and he brought up the last I one I wrote about clouds. He told me how he has loved all of my writing so far but didn’t enjoy this one, he went a step further and told me with a big smile on his face, it wasn’t very manly, which was not like me. That’s fine I said and asked him why? He said it’s about clouds for a start; he couldn’t follow it as it seemed all over the place to him, basically shit. He apologised for the negative feedback and when we had finished laughing, I told him that I regard negative feedback as positive if it’s given in a constructive way, especially by friends, thanked him and gave him a hug. Anyway, this one’s for you, my brother, I hope it resonates and is manly enough for you!

A phrase I was introduced to whilst playing rugby league for the Royal Navy, a mantra I had lived by already, but never heard it branded in such a perfect way. There is an old Māori image: a warrior standing over his enemy, foot on the throat, not out of cruelty but out of certainty. It is the moment when hesitation dies. The moment when resolve becomes a living thing. It’s not about domination, It’s about not letting up; it’s about holding the line when the world tries to rise beneath you and rewrite your fate. The warrior’s stance is a declaration: I will not be moved; I will not loosen my grip on what must be done. The connection between these words and tough contact sports can easily be made and it is a part of your fabric when you choose to step into the arena. To test yourself against another man is to measure the truth of your own limits in real time, stripped of illusion. In the collision of bodies, you discover whether your body and resolve are architecture or ornament, whether your spirit holds its shape when met by equal force. Representing the Royal Navy senior side was an honour in it itself and holding the line against teams like the army; powerful, tough, honourable men themselves and relentless in their own pursuit for victory, was task enough, and when you get on top, you have to apply the foot on the throat!

In life, with many people, including myself, the enemy is rarely a person or people now. It is the doubt that whispers, it’s the fatigue that creeps in. It is the old story that tries to pull you back into who you used to be. For some now, to put your foot on the throat is to silence that story. It’s the refusal to give your struggle half‑measures, the moment you decide that relentlessness is mercy, mercy for your future self, mercy for the life you are trying to build, mercy for the truth you are trying to protect. There is a kind of sacred ruthlessness in this stance. Not cruelty, not rage, but the fierce clarity that says: ‘I will not lift my foot until the doubt stops breathing.’ Every warrior knows this moment, every parent, each survivor. Every person who has stood in the ruins of something or someone they loved and said, I am not finished. Foot on the throat is not violence. It is completion, the final act of courage, an insistence that the battle ends on your terms, not on the terms of whatever tried to break you. And sometimes, that is exactly what life demands.

There is a moment in every inner battle when the struggle stops being external. The Māori warrior’s image – the foot on the throat becomes less about an enemy and more about the part of the self that resists transformation. It is the moment when you recognise that the thing beneath you is not a foe but an old version of you that refuses to die. For me, acceptance of my incurable degenerative disease (now progressive) has been partly in the understanding that as my MS is unrelenting, I too must be relentless in my defiance. Relentlessness is sometimes the only path to liberation. Not the loud, aggressive kind needed during conquest, but the quiet, disciplined unrelenting will of someone who has decided that their life will no longer be shaped by the shadows that once governed them.

When the man beneath the foot refuses to yield, the paradox is that he becomes a warrior in his own right, holding his ground not with dominance, but with defiance. In that moment, he places a metaphorical foot on his own throat, choosing to choke off his fears, rather than let the other man decide the terms of his becoming. To refuse to give in while the foot is on your throat is to claim the last territory that cannot be taken from you, the right to meet the moment on your own terms. Even when life presses down with disease, loss, or the weight of the mind’s darker weather, the act of holding your ground becomes a quiet form of sovereignty: you choose how you face what cannot be avoided. And by deciding that fear, despair, and circumstance will not dictate the meaning of the struggle, you find yourself living again. It could even be said that, in a further final twist, the victim and his refusal to submit inwardly, places his foot in a metaphoric sense back on his adversary’s throat as his spirit was never broken… Just a thought.

As we are all experiencing some form of challenge(s) in our lives, to choose to accept but never to break could help you stay in the fight. Always seek out the positive no matter how hard it is to find. Safe to say, that as a rule, whatever works for you, works for you! Whichever path you choose, I wish you love and light. Personally, I will continue to protect my own peace, be grateful for my blessings and try to continue to emulate the Māori warrior spirit, keeping my Foot on the Throat!