Ten things I hate about rugby
13 Jul 2009
Clinton van der Berg gets a few things off his chest in SA Rugby magazine.
Despite the naysayers, rugby has much to commend. South Africa has magnificent players, fantastic stadia, Wynand Olivier’s hair and the best domestic competition on the planet. But the game isn’t perfect and complacency has no place. These are my 10 biggest gripes about rugby today:
1. New Zealanders and their facial hair. What’s this all about? It’s as if the blighters are stuck in a ’70s porno shoot with dodgy moustaches and exotic sideburns. Take a bow, Cory Jane (right) and Ma’a Nonu, the chief culprits this year among the heaps of others. Not to mention the Kiwis’ ghastly mullets …
2. Daft rugby-speak. What exactly is a ‘low centre of gravity’ except a nonsensical euphemism for being short and squat? Why are players condemned for ‘running away from support’? Erm, should they instead run towards their support?
3. Spectators who smoke. Is there anything more inconsiderate, especially with kids around? It’s true that games are tense and dramatic, but smoking is a refuge for the weak-willed and selfish. South African rugby’s refusal to clamp down – ostensibly because bylaws don’t allow for legal sanctions – is maddening and a blatant cop-out.
4. Don’t you just hate it that some of the best rugby is produced after the full-time hooter? Often this period produces sweeping movement through eight or nine phases and the most dramatic action. In many instances, it barely compensates for the stale previous 80 minutes.
5. The Western Province media gang. What’s up, boys, gone soft? Time was when the team was a big, all-powerful gorilla. Now, for gorilla read poodle – and the obsequious Cape media lap up the tired, lame excuses for mediocrity. Extraordinary.
6. Western Province paranoia. It’s easier to interview the Pope than a Stormers player. The Stormers’ management would prefer you to jump through hoops to get to their players. And don’t try to attend a training session. These are blokes who kick a ball around (and drop it a lot), not demi-gods.
7. Peter de Villiers, Eddie Jones, Luke Watson – bless ’em. No trite soundbites from them. We might not always like what they say, but they’re never boring, unlike so many other personalities in the game. This was Eddie’s take on the duffers who dreamt up the ELVs: ‘They definitely stuffed up the laws. There was a lot of wine drunk by old coaches in Stellenbosch, which has been wasted’. And Watson in defence of Stormers coach Rassie Erasmus: ‘Sometimes we play like idiots’. Beautiful.
8. Citing procedures. They’re shot through with inconsistencies and unfair rulings. Some of the sanctions in this year’s Super 14 were scandalous. As ever, the players were the ones who never knew where they stood. An unadulterated mess.
9. Bloody ELVs. All they did was pollute the game, spoiling it for players and spectators in the process. Two years of these yielded nothing but frustration and confusion.
10. With few exceptions, local stadium announcers offer pure schlock. It’s nauseating and downright irritating to hear some of the drek that passes for ‘entertainment’.
30 Comments
13 Jul 2009, 10:12 am
Annoyed Dragon
13 Jul 2009, 10:14 am
I only really agree with 8 and 9. Bless the IRB
13 Jul 2009, 10:17 am
Stop moderating clean posts!!!
13 Jul 2009, 10:18 am
Number 1 on my list of things I don’t like about Keo…
13 Jul 2009, 10:19 am
Ah having a cigarette at a sports venue, cant wait to get back to SA for that!
13 Jul 2009, 10:42 am
If these are his gripes, he must a be a happy man.
Try being a white, Afrikaans male who supports WP.
Which can be translated in some circles, and probably will be within the next few posts by KK/Optimus et al, into a colourless racial supremist suffering from a guttural disease of the throat and with a lack of knowledge regarding the game of rugby.
Which will not bother me much, I am by now used to kuk, just from reading/listening to the stuff dished up by the WP and Stormers coaches and media.
Good morning everyone, and thanks WP – well done all!!!
13 Jul 2009, 10:47 am
#5 Disa: Good luck with that one !
13 Jul 2009, 10:59 am
#5 Disa: The last outpost for Smokers !!! Can go through a pack of smokes watchining the Golden Lions !
13 Jul 2009, 11:14 am
This article was lame. The **** his guy can write is amusing though
13 Jul 2009, 11:21 am
I sat on the bong the other night when I read this article.
And after reading it I thought it was quite fitting.
Because top of my list on 10 things I hate about rugby is articles like this.
13 Jul 2009, 11:23 am
Seriously Simon.
Please try and get people with rugby insight to write columns in the mag.
Where is Schalk senior? Naas? Mallet? Those were the days…
13 Jul 2009, 11:37 am
#10 PissAnt: rofl
#11 PissAnt: please no
13 Jul 2009, 11:43 am
who the hell cares what you like… unless this a parody… in which case its totally ****
13 Jul 2009, 12:25 pm
I once read a Clinton Van Rensburg Article that was vaguely interesting …
cant remember when though , think it was about boxing tho
Simon cant you guys get Simnikiwe instead
cheers
13 Jul 2009, 12:32 pm
this sounds like the sort of rant you would expect from the barfly in the corner that everybody avoids for fear of being trapped in a 1/2 hour tirade when all you want to do is pee, get another drink and try and wangle that hot blonde’s phone number. Meanwhile after listening to this idiot’s twaddleyou discover that you have pissed your pants, the baris four deep and the hot blonde is retrieving the dj’s tonsils with her tongue….thats how I feel after reading this article…
13 Jul 2009, 13:33 pm
One of the things i hate is how certain journalists have their own private little agendas that they keep on promoting whenever they have the chance, ignoring the obvious things about certain players/coaches and just keep on pushing the same old line that they have obviously agreed upon somewhere along the line.
I also think certain ex-springbok media reps, now rugbyjournalist, have very little good to say about anything related to SA rugby. Give praise when needed, as in when we have won, criticise when we have lost. It seems they like to do the opposite, always telling us how wonderfull the other team is and how **** we are. This coming usually coming from little snots that never played the game past Std 5 and would not have even made the third team of most schools. Even worse than that is the ******** that eat up every word they say. But like they say: Bullshit baffles brains and a degree in journalism apparently makes you invincible.
13 Jul 2009, 13:38 pm
#16 stofjas:
I don’t think a degree is a prequisite, judging from the nonsense they spin for their ‘daily bread’.
Take Muhammed Ashfak from the ‘Son’ or Richard Lake from ‘Rapport, as examples.
13 Jul 2009, 14:22 pm
He should’ve added the cliche mode ALL-yes, ALL- our rugby players kick into when it’s time for interviews. Tjerrr… :yawn:
13 Jul 2009, 14:59 pm
#2
Center of gravity is the same as center of mass here on the surface of Earth where we have a constant gravitational force.
Center of gravity, or center of mass, is a physics term that refers to average point of all the object’s mass (or weight). It is not a daft expression, because it tells you a lot about a player’s moment of inertia.
Specifically, the axis of rotation when a player falls is along the ground. Moment of inertia is proportional to how much torque is required to rotate a player. In other words, the lower a player’s center of gravity is, the more torque you are likely to require to make him fall.
So, yeah, it’s not a daft expression. Please try to tolerate rugby people with a superior appreciation of physics.
13 Jul 2009, 15:19 pm
#19 coherence: You’re clearly more of a scientist than I am, so maybe you can correct me here:
My guess is that a player like Luke Watson has an extraordinarily massive centre of gravity. I say this because the world seems to revolve around him. Is this a scientifically accurate statement?
13 Jul 2009, 15:28 pm
Yes
13 Jul 2009, 16:07 pm
OMG! Rugby is ***. Where did it go wrong?? Where’s rugby gone?? It’s like a beauty contest.
13 Jul 2009, 16:09 pm
No 1 thing I hate about rugby : any fool seems to be a rugby journalist these days.
13 Jul 2009, 20:51 pm
Very funny. This article and all the comments have made me laugh my arse off. Thanks for the craziness. We Saffa’s are lunatics.
14 Jul 2009, 04:31 am
1. New Zealanders and their facial hair.
Haaahaaaahaaaa!!! Hey, in all fairness, if you lived at the arse end of the world far from civilisation you’d also have to find ways to be fashionable. Billy goat and man ape is perhaps the Kaaiwaais way of expressing their fashion sense.
14 Jul 2009, 08:11 am
do you want some cheese with that wine?
save it for oprah
send it off to reader’s digest
cry me a river
tell your story walking
booo-fakin-hooo
what don’t you freakin cry about it?
14 Jul 2009, 09:08 am
#20 katman:
Love it…. but technically a centre of gravity is unitless, so nobody can have a centre of gravity that is bigger than anyone elses….
Gravitational force is related to density of the object, so I think what you meant is that Watson is the densest thing in rugby…
14 Jul 2009, 11:48 am
NZers and their facial hair ??!!!
which part of ‘not taking yourself too seriously’ do you NOT understand ?
17 Jul 2009, 14:59 pm
#27 chappy: The centre of gravity is a location.
2 Aug 2009, 05:32 am
#25 Predawn: If NZ is the arse end of the world then what is South Africa? The toilet bowl? The sewer?
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