This is rugby
HEY, this is the real deal! The Currie Cup season got off to a great start in Nelspruit with the Sharks playing the kind of explosive rugby that gets results.
The forwards were absolutely magnificent, in the tight and loose. That second try – an advancing set scrum linking suddenly to the backs was simply sublime.
Stand-in flyhalf Curwin Bosch is a find. There was a bit of wild passing in the backs, but you get the sense the guys have been told to throw caution to the winds. This is entertaining rugby, winning rugby. Presumably it's the coaching input of Robert du Preez.
Wellington? Where the heck's that? Roll on the Currie Cup!
What of the traditional celebratory feu de joie at the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties when the street lights are shot out with catapults fashioned from the ladies' knicker elastic? Unfortunately it didn't transpire. The damsels weren't wearing knickers that night.
Brave show
BUT of course we were not allowed to entirely forget Wellington. The Lions were there in the Super Rugby final, in conditions almost as bad as ours in the quarter-final, also having just got off a monster eastward flight.
The Lions put on a brave show. It was great to see them still driving at the Hurricanes' line as the final minutes ticked away in a game they could no longer win. It was heroic. This is the essence of rugby.
The Hurricanes' rush defence was highly disconcerting for the Lions – they do it so well, it becomes a means of attack. Jantjies and company almost weathered the storm - but almost just ain't enough.
One doesn't like to whinge but when will the Sanzar people get around to recognising that the competition is hopelessly skewed in favour of New Zealand and Australian sides?
If Kiwi or Aussie teams have to fly to South Africa for a play-off, the distance is the same but the flight is east-west – nothing near as enervating as west-east. Surely the play-offs could be spaced by a fortnight to allow players to recover from jetlag?
Otherwise it would make more sense for us to play our rugby in the northern hemisphere competitions. The distances are much shorter and the flights are south-north – no jetlag.
Boss ladies
A READER sends in a snippet from a book, Don't Quote Me, by Don Atyeo and Jonathan Green.
"Margaret Thatcher, interviewed in the Sunday Telegraph on October 26, 1969, after her appointment as shadow spokesman on Education: 'No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary - not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn't want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.'"
She couldn't have been more wrong, could she? Ask the coal miners. Ask the Argentines. And now the Brits have Theresa May.
Their press has been full of comparisons and likenesses. Like Margaret before her, Theresa drags around a gawky husband who looks rather like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Denis Thatcher, by comparison, was a rather splendid old buffer.
The current photos seem to always emphasise Theresa's May's somewhat sinewy legs, on tottery high heels. Should a woman her age be exposed to this kind of scrutiny?
The answer surely would be trouser suits. When a woman becomes prime minister, she's wearing the trousers anyway.
Big mozzie
THE Rio Olympics are rolling, in spite of difficulties such as mosquitoes spreading the zika virus and allegations of widespread, state-sponsored doping among Russian athletes.
Cartoonist Matt captures it in the London Daily Telegraph. A couple of scientists are looking in astonishment at a massive mosquito – about the height of two men. A Rio Games poster is on the wall.
One scientist says: "This is what happened when a mosquito bit a Russian athlete."
Tailpiece
AN ENGLISHMAN, an Irishman, a Scotsman, a Welshman, a Gurkha, a Latvian, an American, a South African, a Cypriot, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Mexican, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Swede, a Finn, an Israeli, a Dane, a Romanian, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian, a Libyan and an Ethiopian go to a night club.
Bouncer: "Sorry, I can't let you in without a Thai."
Last word
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
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