Tackled high, we wuz
WE WUZ robbed! Okay, we wuz also pretty pathetic at times, like those scrums and lineouts in the first half and as for Morne Steyn's missed touch from a penalty in the dying minutes – mama mia!
But the decisive factor in this Test between the Boks and the Wallabies was without doubt referee George Clancy. We're used to referees who don't know their ass from their elbow but here was one who doesn't know waist from adam's apple.
That chest-high power tackle by Duane Vermuelen was actually magnificent and totally clean. When Bryan Habana was yellow-carded for a high tackle 12 minutes or so from the end – leaving us to defend with 14 men – the tackle was also magnificent and absolutely clean. His arm did slip over his opponent's shoulder at one stage, but that was not the tackle. The tackle, that took the opponent into touch, was actually around the waist.
These were not home town decisions, of course. Clancy is an Irishman, not an Aussie. But he's surely a candidate for the very next convict ship.
Which raises a point we've discussed before. Refs can make mistakes – that's inevitable. But should they have the right to distort the game by ordering a player from the field with no replacement – even if he was guilty of a gross misdemeanour?
Let the guilt or otherwise be decided afterwards by a panel watching the video. In cases of guilt let the punishment be severe – punitive fines, lengthy suspensions.
But let the match continue as an even contest. Let the offending player be replaced by somebody off the bench.
The IRB need to give this their attention. As WG Grace said as he was given out lbw by a cricket umpire: "They came to watch me bat, not to watch you umpire."
Digital wonks
A COMMON theme in science fiction is sentient machines that have discovered
the power of decision-making. They no longer rely on human input. All kinds of horror becomes possible.
Actually, something very similar is already happening. The world is at the mercy of digital wonks.
Windows is competing with Apple. The designer wonks are trying to outdo one another. The result is computer programs, that are outlandishly beyond the capacity of the ordinary user, the man or woman in the street.
I myself am a victim. A month or two ago my home computer was fried in a power surge caused by cable theft. I had to replace it. I asked for the old program to be installed. It was familiar and did everything I needed.
But this program is no longer available. I had to take something with the digital equivalent of bells and whistles. Super-duper, they said. I would love it.
But it's been a nightmare. The thing has a mind of its own. It has no logic that I can follow.
The other evening I met up with a schoolteacher who told me she has exactly the same program and is terrified to switch it on .
Sometimes this new program of mine goes off on a tangent and simply goes awol. It doesn't do the most basic things you ask.
I know my computer guru will fix it with a couple of keystrokes. But these things always happen late on a Friday. Which is why this column is written on a mainframe computer elsewhere.
Is this progress? Call off the wonks and give us what we want.
Metrication
OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "A centipede is an inchworm gone metric."
Spy tapes
IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, pens some lines on the Spy Tapes drama.
At last the tapes are with Zille,
With outcomes akin to a thriller;
Who is the fall guy,
Who'll say goodbye?
Will No.1 still have his hands on the tiller?
Tailpiece
THIS fellow is going through the pockets of an old jacket when he finds a ticket for shoe repairs. It's dated 11 years ago. He can't even remember what shoes he left at the repair shop. He takes the ticket in, out of curiosity.
The repairman takes the ticket then goes rummaging in the storeroom. Surely they can't still be there? Then he sings out: "Found 'em."
He comes back empty-handed.
"They'll be ready Thursday."
Last word
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
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