Rugby and the ref factor
THE DECISION by the Irish Rugby Union to put its side into black jerseys when they can't wear their traditional green now begins to make sense. It's apparent that IRB referees and assistant referees are intimidated by black jerseys.
Watching the All Blacks-Scotland encounter at the Street Centre for the Over-40s, the overwhelming consensus was that if you're wearing an All Blacks jersey – and especially if your name happens to be Richie McCaw – you are allowed to hang about offside and dive over the ruck to poach the ball. Also to run lines that block off potential tacklers.
Diving over the rucks actually looks great fun – but surely everyone should be allowed to do it.
The match also highlighted an anomaly that is fast becoming a vile hypocrisy. The laws state quite clearly that the scrumhalf should put the ball in straight, the way it has to go in straight to the line-outs.
All Blacks scrumhalf Piri Weepu was putting in the ball so unashamedly skew, it was as if he were trying to pass direct to Dan Carter at flyhalf.
This is happening all over, not just when the All Blacks are involved. It is a pandering to the heretics who want to call the scrum a "restart" and consider it to be the equivalent of the Rugby League monkey scrum, with a bit of grunt and heave for effect but possession more or less guaranteed the putter-in.
Enough of this heresy! The game is in danger of falling into disrepute. The punters are getting restless.
Be warned
AN ANGUISHED message comes in from Zoltan de Rossner, of Pennington.
"Please send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list.
"If someone comes to your front door saying they are checking for ticks due to the warm weather, and ask you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!!
"They only want to see you dance naked. I wish I'd got this yesterday … I feel so stupid."
Be warned. It's a jungle out there.
Omwip?
READER Jeremy Whysall reacts to yesterday's piece about Mamwips – Middle-Aged Men with iPads.
"I am 74 with an iPad - does that make me an Omwip?"
Old Man With iPad? Maybe it does.
Jeremy attaches a pun. "There was this lady who had twins. She called them Ureen and Urine - because they were as alike as two peas."
These 74-year-olds can sometimes get a bit inconsequential.
Sars or Tears
ROB NICOLAI, chief astro-physicist and quantum mechanic of Howick, turns his scientific skills to financial/political analysis.
Drawing a parallel between Sars, the bird/swine flu pandemic, and Sars, the South African Revenue Service, he says there's a danger of state tender fraud depleting our Sars tax base.
"With these scarce resources hitting empty, the symptoms manifest in service delivery protests, military personnel going on strike and investors fleeing with their capital, the definitions of Sars are confusing.
"I think the service should be renamed locally as Tears (Tender Enrichment of ANC Representative Structures). There is no known treatment for the inevitable outbreak of nation-wide Tears unless a rude awakening actually does come about in the 2014 national elections."
Bananas
AN INTERNATIONAL trade dispute over bananas has been settled after two decades of wrangling.
The European Union and 10 Latin American countries have signed an agreement to formally end eight separate World Trade Organisation (WTO) cases. The agreement follows the EU agreeing in December 2009 to gradually reduce the tariffs on Latin American bananas.
One reads all this with relief – because South Africa is not even mentioned. With all the talk these days of a banana republic, one suffers an involuntary twitch.
Tailpiece
A MOTORIST in North Carolina has a flat tyre. He pulls off onto the roadside and puts a bouquet of flowers in front of the car and one behind it. Then he gets back in the car to wait for breakdown assistance.
A passerby drives by He turns around, goes back and asks what the problem is.
"I got a flat tahr."
"But what's with the flowers?"
"They tell you when you break down to put flares in the front and flares in the back. I never did understand it neither."
Last word
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
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