‘I moustache you a question, but I’ll shave it for later.’ – Anonymous.
There’s something darkly ironic about hosting an event for men’s health in a smoky bar.
But the crew who campaign for Movember clearly don’t care much for political correctness. Besides, bars are where hipsters and wannabe hipsters – those dudes who haven’t got round to sprouting vast quantities of facial hair – hang out. The Movember Movers know their market, apparently.
The great campaign to grow a mo is upon us this weekend. Before you groan, take heed of the campaign’s broader ideal, which is to shine the spotlight on men’s health issues.
These are the ones us blokes don’t like to talk about, like prostate and testicular cancer, and men’s mental health and physical inactivity. Yes, fatty, that’s you.
As the guys in Melville told us, it’s all about having a happier, healthier – and hairier – lifestyle. What’s not to like?
Movember encourages men to become “Mo Bros” by signing up on www.movember.com. The rules require each Mo Bro to start Movember clean shaven and to grow and groom a moustache for the entire month, effectively becoming a walking, talking billboard for the 30 days of Movember.
This, of course, gets people talking; a slick way to campaign for good health.
Woman, and not just those who can cultivate their own moustaches, are encouraged to sign up as “Mo Sistas” to support the bros. (East Randers will understand the in-joke).
I do a desperately sad imitation of Tom Selleck, so for those like me who can’t quite pull off the mo look, this year the Movember Foundation has added an additional aspect to the campaign: the option to sign up to MOVE. When signing up on the Movember website, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas can choose to make a commitment to MOVE for the 30 days of Movember.
This pledge can include anything from a daily brisk walk or taking the stairs instead of the lift, to surfing, cycling, swimming or anything that gets the heart rate up.
For more information or to sign up as a Mo Bro or Mo Sista visit www.movember.com or download the Movember app on your mobile device. Follow Movember on social media: @MovemberRSA on Twitter or facebook/MovemberSouthAfrica.
Movember country manager Garron Gsell , Danine Naidoo and musician Jo Englebrecht in front of the Movember Jeep.
Last year, the good people of Movember cracked R6,5-million for the campaign. With your help, they hope to do even better in 2015.
As the World Cup final looms and yet another Bok Test shapes up, only one mood will do: great disappointment – but only because the magnificent World Cup is almost at an end.
Those days and hours of anticipation, ultimately concluding in outstanding matches, will soon have to be consumed by something else.
No matter that the Boks bombed. The bigger picture reflected a sport in rude health. Standards have been excellent and the public’s appetite for big-game action has been unstinting. Even neutrals have been swept up by the fervour.
Just two games remain, the first featuring the Boks against the Pumas for the hollow bronze (live SS1, 10pm Friday).
It’s a bit like unwrapping your presents on Christmas morning to find a pair of socks while your older brother gets a PlayStation. No-one wants the socks.
But it is what it is and if you search really hard, you’ll find some needle in the game. First, it offers the Boks an opportunity to atone for their shemozzle in Durban a few months ago, when the Pumas humiliated them. Subsequent form suggests Argentina were already on the up, culminating in their semi-final placing in England.
The match will also determine whether South Africa end the year with a winning or losing ratio. The record stands at five wins, five defeats. Another tick in the win column would put some gloss on a largely ordinary year.
Third place would also solidify the Boks’ standing in the world game. They are demonstrably not in the top two – there’s daylight between them and the finalists – but they remain contenders able to put up a rousing fight most days.
So to the final (SS1, 6pm Saturday).
What few have mentioned is how poorly New Zealand played for large chunks of their semi-final against the Boks. The penalty count alone was out of whack and the scrum had a tough time of it. But what the All Blacks have is genius talent that trades in self-belief and composure. They never panic and always believe they will find a way, as they did against South Africa.
Unlike Australia and South Africa, they have perfected the winning habit that makes it extraordinarily difficult for others to break.
The Wallabies have been rejuvenated under Michael Cheika and are playing with greater energy and purpose than they have in years. Their backrow has done wonders, supplemented by a scrum that has been reinvented. Little wonder Adam Ashley-Cooper and his backline cohorts have struck hard and fast.
Were the final in New Zealand, I wouldn’t give them a sniff – we saw what happened in the Rugby Championship this year – but Twickenham will be a leveller. The Wallabies can do what the Boks did, except they play the pressure game far better. They are more accurate and ambitious and will demand far more of the All Blacks in defence than South Africa did.
Ultimately, a glorious, hard-fought final is in store; one that pits many of the world’s best against each other.
I told her I had been invited to the GQ Best Dressed Man awards. She burst out laughing.
I don’t have self-image hang-ups or issues with appearance, but that hurt.
I like a good get-up as much as the next guy, but I’d be lying if I claimed to be at the cutting edge of fashion. Unless rugby shirts count. Or ripped jeans from Istanbul.
But I clean up okay and, anyway, GQ represents formidably rugged types, not just Johnny Depp clones.
As David Beckham once said, “I like nice clothes, whether they’re dodgy or not.”
I had been at Ellis Park the day before for the Currie Cup final. To a man, rugby supporters are in desperate need of a mass makeover. Shorts and slops and beer bellies have been de rigueur for years. Fat chance of running into a GQ photographer in Doornfontein. A mechanic, perhaps, but never a GQ man.
Off to Summer Place, the swanky venue that was once home to sanctions-busting billionaire Marino Chiavelli. Nice pad for a party.
GQ editor Craig Tyson.
GQ boss man Craig Tyson told us that people petition to crack the Top 10 and beg and plead, to no avail. “You don’t find us, we find you.”
“It’s not about the clothes. It’s about attitude. Style. Changing the rules.”
Rebels, the lot of them.
Heaven knows where they were looking. Teko Modise, the soccer player, I knew. I recognised one other finalist as someone often spotted around my office building and another as a top muso. Other than that, nada.
Time for a new comfort zone.
The best-dressed guy I know is Demarte Pena, and he’s a Mixed Martial Artist. He makes people bleed for a living, but, damn, he’s a natty dresser away from the hexagon.
I work in behind-the-scenes television where dressing up means wearing a belt or checking for matching socks. It was much the same in newspapers, although there were two splendid exceptions in my time at the Sunday Times: Lesley Mofokeng and Craig Jacobs. These two cranked the style quotient up all on their own, so it wasn’t surprising to see both on the party list.
Lesley Mofokeng and ‘Mr Slimfit’.
Lesley introduced my missus and me to freelance stylist Theo Ngobeni, owner and creative director of Mr Slimfit. Cool, confident guy. As you’d have to be if you traded in a career in investment banking for fashion. But he pulls the look off. And now he dresses the bankers he used to work with.
Summer Place was a hotbed of style, although it was definitely a case of narrow preferences. As razor-sharp host (and comedian) Trevor Gumbi remarked, one guy looked as if he had been styled in Lesotho where the tribal Seanamarena blanket is celebrated.
Another looked as if he had just climbed out of bed, probably on account of what looked like radiant pyjamas. But, eh, each to his own. I buy my socks at Woolworths.
Oh, and Micasa frontman J’Something walked away with the big gong.
Six years ago international referee Willie Roos found himself in the middle of a heated Griquas-Bulls match in Kimberley.
Determined to keep a handle on the game, he issued two yellow cards to Griquas, who were duly beaten.
In the ugly aftermath Roos was abused. He even had a drink thrown in his face by an angry supporter.
Having had his fill of insults through the years, Roos called his boss at SA Rugby. “I’m done,” said the 34-year-old. He retired after 15 years of duty with the whistle.
Never mind the investment that his employer had made in him over the years. The result was that a promising young referee was lost to the system forever.
And so we come to the case of Maritzburg College old boy Craig Joubert. You’ve got to go some to dominate the headlines in the World Cup, but Joubert has had that dubious honour after his handling of the Scotland-Australia game.
He’s the villain of the piece in Scotland, not because he appeared to make a couple of wrong decisions, but because the losers demand a scapegoat; anyone but someone from within.
They forget their team’s own mistakes, chiefly the daft decision to opt for a deep lineout at the death, and they forget the clangers that led to Australia scoring. Far easier to blame the referee.
This isn’t to absolve Joubert. By his own high standards, he had an ordinary game, but it was no better or worse than some others at the World Cup.
The point is that Joubert is human. He’s refereed hundreds of games and never been perfect. He makes mistakes, as do all referees.
What should distinguish rugby from other sports, particularly soccer, which trades in abuse, is the respect for authority. With the all-seeing eye of television second-guessing every decision, referees are under enormous pressure. It’s easy for the rest of us to carp on from our couches with the benefit of six camera angles in slow-motion.
To hound Joubert, as the baying masses are doing, is to do the game a disservice.
A bottle had been flung Joubert’s way. Can you say you would have stuck around under the circumstances?
Rugby has long traded on its virtues of being a clean and honourable game. Joubert’s public evisceration is the thin end of the wedge. What’s next, a gauntlet for him to run through? Tar and feathers?
As much as we may detest Bryce Lawrence for his perceived sleight of SA in 2011, the same holds true for him. His crime was botching a major game. It happens, and it cost him his career.
If Joubert is hurting, this would have been amplified by World Rugby’s statement that he had got the decision wrong. Talk about throwing someone under the bus.
The Joubert issue is symptomatic of a bigger issue in rugby and that is the laws, applying them and using the TMO. The laws are far too complex and open to interpretation. Fans are sick to death of the constant chopping and changing. Imagine how the players feel. And we moan about referees getting it wrong.
Officials ought to be able to reach out to the TMO over 50-50 calls, not just foul-play or try-scoring (although I wish refs would trust their judgment more often). But there must be a cap on the time allowed, otherwise rugby will become like American football, played over four hours.
Rugby should also embrace an idea that has floated around for a number of years, namely a captain’s appeal. Each team could be given two opportunities for captains to dispute a call.
Tennis has something similar whereby players are allowed to appeal to Hawk-Eye. They lose the privilege if the appeal goes against them three times per set.
It works well and adds an exciting dimension to the game. Imagine how it could spice things up in rugby. Captains would be empowered and the opportunity to right a wrong would be greatly enhanced.
The pressure on Joubert must be intolerable. The mistake is to join the barbarians at the gate baying for his blood.
As tomorrow’s clash of rugby’s heavyweights looms into view, a lesson from 1991 wouldn’t be remiss.
England, having relied on the unerring boot of Rob Andrew, were favourites to win the World Cup final.
But then they got suckered by the Australian press, who labelled them boring. England promptly tried to play a wide running game. Eighty minutes later a grinning Nick Farr-Jones was holding the Webb Ellis Cup aloft at Twickenham.
It was a profound lesson in not moving away from what works. Hopefully the Springboks have learned from history, particularly as they take heat for their unadventurous style.
The only way the Boks can beat the All Blacks in tomorrow’s semifinal is by smashing them. It’s time for the sledgehammer rather than the surgeon.
When you are as big and mean and ugly as the Boks, you don’t try and match the All Blacks for skill. You drag them down to your level by playing industrial rugby. The kicking game the Boks are so wedded to is fine, but the execution needs to be clinical. No good kicking it down their throats, which is why Fourie du Preez should be handed the job. His dead-eye boot can turn their backs and put them in two minds before the marauders pile into them.
The 1995 final also offers a valuable lesson. Glen Osborne, Jonah Lomu and the rest tried hard, but the Boks had their measure at the scrums and breakdowns. Julian Savea and Ma’a Nonu can’t feast if the forwards are locked into a grappling match and producing slow ball. They need to be knocked off their rhythm rather than given a free pass as hopeless France allowed last week.
The All Blacks are better than anyone because they execute so well. We admired Duane Vermeulen’s sumptuous match-winning pass last weekend, but the All Blacks can produce such moments 10 times a match.
The Boks’ execution has not been nearly as slick. Tomorrow it must be. Any mistake will be pounced on by New Zealand’s scavengers, chiefly Richie McCaw, the best wild dog in the business.
Given the need to play it hard and tight, any major plays must come off Du Preez. He’s not as quick as he once was, but he’s shrewder than ever and will know how to unpick the world’s best team. His clash against Aaron Smith, his heir apparent, will offer a fantastic sub-plot.
The All Blacks have won 10 of their last 12 Tests against the Boks. History says they will march on, as they usually do, but the Boks have the means – and the muscle – to crush their ambitions.
There hasn’t been a more low-key Currie Cup final buildup in history.
That’s what happens when your local showpiece coincides with the gathering of rugby’s superpowers at the World Cup.
Too bad, because Saturday at Ellis Park holds the prospect of producing an outstanding conclusion to the season with the rampant Lions up against Western Province, a team that is dangerous at the back and will fight hard.
The Lions have provided the key narrative during the season thanks to coach Johan Ackerman’s refreshing policy of letting his players play free and fast. They’ve thrown off the shackles and consistently produced open, flowing rugby that gives lie to the claim that SA teams are incapable of doing so.
Better still is that their right five has been the best in the competition, laying a foundation of pure muscle. There are no fancy frills from them; just elemental scrummaging and a fine appreciation of doing the basics smartly.
In Lourens Erasmus they have one of SA rugby’s most dynamic young locks and in Julian Redelinghuys and Ruan Dreyer they’ve got two under-appreciated props who haven’t taken a step backwards all season. I’m high on Malcolm Marx, the hooker, too. Physically intimidating, he is the archetypal frontrow monster every serious pack needs.
The flash has come from Warren Whiteley, the captain, and backrow compadre Jaco Kriel, whose star continues to rise. Whiteley’s workrate is outstanding, while Kriel’s ability to exploit space and cross the gainline has made him the Currie Cup’s best forward. They might as well fit him for a Bok jersey now – his chance won’t be long in coming.
WP bring good game, too, with Cheslin Kolbe’s unorthodoxy giving them a decent crack on Saturday.
But as an avowed Lions man, I’m going for the home team. Unbeaten all season, there’s no reason to break a winning habit. Not now.
TV: Live SS1 from 1.45pm (the World Cup semifinal will be broadcast on the Ellis Park big screen afterwards).
‘I kill a man and most people forgive me. However, I love a man and many say this makes me an evil person.’ – Emile Griffith.
It’s always struck me as a little odd that when mention is made of South Africa’s finest writers, the name Donald McRae never comes up.
There are probably a number of reasons for this, one of which is likely the mistaken assumption that he’s a sports writer rather than a real writer. You know, he writes about stuff that doesn’t really matter.
The other is that he lives in England and has cultivated a career over there, so he isn’t really one of us.
I would venture, too, that his work isn’t as well-known locally because his writing isn’t narrow enough. He writes for, and with, a world view.
It’s true that McRae earns his daily crust as a sports writer for The Guardian – his big-read interviews are gold – but his interests are broad. He has had 10 books published, some of them beyond the sports realm. These include Every Second Counts: The Race to Transplant the First Human Heart, The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow, Nothing Personal (The Business of Sex) and Under Our Skin, the story of growing up in apartheid South Africa. Each was warmly acclaimed.
Twice he has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award, a staggering achievement in a market as vibrant as the UK, and he enjoys a reputation for being one of the most perspicacious of writers. He has an eye for detail that is as sharp as his writing.
I was thrilled when Donald made contact and promised to send me his latest work, A Man’s World. To say it is the story of a fighter is rather like saying Muhammad Ali could box a bit. A Man’s World, about five-time former world champion Emile Griffith, is one of the most remarkable stories of our time.
Griffith fought more championship rounds than any boxer in history and could be brutal and punishing. He was also gay. And he once killed an opponent.
The world is a far different place to how it was in the 1960s and Griffith could never quite be himself, more so because he excelled in the most macho of worlds, the boxing ring. Yet, among the gays and transvestites of New York, where he lived, he felt best. They adored and celebrated their secret hero.
Homosexuality was so suppressed that even the sports writers of the day chose to tip-toe around it. There were whispers, but few dared to openly write about Paret’s sexual preferences. When one did, a priggish sub-editor altered a reference to Griffith as a “homosexual” to “unman”; whatever that meant.
What makes this book a gem is that it’s far more than a book about boxing. Tragedy courses through almost every page on account of Griffith being involved in one of boxing’s most high profile ring deaths, with Benny “Kid” Paret dying at the end of his fists.
It haunted Griffith until his dying days a few years ago, yet the contradiction was that the coarse Paret humiliated him, openly calling him maricon (“faggot”) and feigning homosexual sex at the weigh-in. Griffith ought to have despised him, but any sense of vengeance disappeared the moment Paret slipped into his coma. Griffith was devastated. Years later, he was moved to tears upon meeting Paret’s son (see video below).
Griffith fought on for more than a decade, packing in another 79 fights, but there was no question that he often held back for fear of what might happen.
One of the most enjoyable parts of the book covers Griffith’s fight in 1960 with Willie Toweel, one of the scions of South Africa’s great boxing family. It was the last fight of Toweel’s storied career. There was enormous respect between the pair, friendship even, and Toweel’s heartfelt letter to Griffith in the aftermath of the Paret tragedy is tribute to the South African’s supreme dignity. Toweel could feel Griffiths’ pain, having once killed an opponent himself.
Willie is 81 now and still lives in Randburg, but sadly he suffers from dementia, as did Griffith, a consequence of taking thousands of punches to the head.
The writer also tells the story of Griffiths’ visit to SA in 1975, a visit that struck a young McRae in a very real, visceral way. Griffiths was long past his best when he came to fight Elijah “Tap Tap” Makhathini in Soweto. South Africa’s bizarre policies at the time meant that Gil Clancy, Griffiths’ trainer, couldn’t accompany his fighter to Soweto.
In that case, said Griffith (who had been anointed an “honorary white” by the apartheid government), he wouldn’t fight. The Nats quickly buckled and Clancy was one of the few white faces allowed at the fight.
The story of Griffiths’ early years is remarkable and poignantly captured. It takes in him being sexually molested and, later, being discovered when working as a women’s hat-maker.
McRae is fortunate because the Griffiths’ narrative is so compelling; it demanded to be told. His secret, though, was in taking such care with research and writing that the detail is searing and gives the book a rare gravitas.
His first boxing book, Dark Trade, was a classic. A Man’s World is another, gloriously told.
Through accident rather than design, World Cups represent a watershed of sorts for rugby.
Whether in playing style or shifts in power, or even portending a move to professionalism, as 1995 did, the tournament is inevitably a turning point.
This one is no different. Thanks in the main to Japan’s stirring performances, the old boys’ club is in danger of crumbling. We’ve always spoken patronisingly of the emergence of the minnows, but 2015 finally gave meaty impetus to those claims.
Japan were the best technically coached team at the Cup, as they proved in devastating fashion against South Africa. Even now, not enough has been said about that extraordinary upset. They are the best passers in the game, superior to New Zealand even, and they produced the most dynamic and effective mauling in the World Cup.
A shattered Heyneke Meyer predicted more upsets of the Japanese type, but there weren’t. Samoa gave Scotland hell, Georgia even frightened the All Blacks and Fiji and Romania had their moments, but there was no other breakthrough game.
But the minnows have unquestionably got their act together. Foreign coaches have left their mark and a significant lift in fitness has evened things up. Should this trajectory be maintained, it won’t be long before upsets become more common, not least when Japan host the next World Cup. You wouldn’t want to be in a group with them.
The one thing that hasn’t changed is the scheduling of the matches and the disciplinary verdicts. Tier Two nations are hard done by. Case in point: the stark difference in punishments meted out to Alesana Tuilagi and Sean O’Brien. Guess who copped the harsher ban, the Samoan or the Irishman?
The more teams at rugby’s top table, the stronger the game will be. Now let’s wait and see which major nation next hosts a Test or two against one of the lightweights.
What’s also caught on in this edition of the World Cup is the rolling maul. It’s not just that we’re seeing more of it; everyone is using it as a weapon. It used to be South Africa’s prime attacking force, and remains a potent bludgeon, but other countries have caught on.
The trouble with the rolling maul is that it’s predictable and it looks inherently wrong, probably because it so obviously condones legalised obstruction. The fair contest thus goes out the window, particularly as it is so difficult to legally contest.
It’s disappointing that just four matches remain of the 48. The rugby has been so compelling, so hard fought, that I’ve fallen in love with the game again. The Samoa-Scotland match was a belter, but for raw ferocity Ireland against France was off the charts. The physical battering Pascal Pape and Louis Picamoles dished out bordered on assault, and it was sensational.
Wales against Australia was no less intense and the 13-man stand by the Wallabies will go down in rugby lore.
It was disappointing, of course, that England left the party 16 days after it began, thanks to the ridiculous pool groupings. Their reputation took a beating, but the country went up in my estimation as a host. The pool stages were attended by a staggering 1,8 million people and yesterday’s quarterfinals were jam-packed. As far as a vehicle for marketing the great game, the World Cup has been a stirring affair.
Some are proclaiming it the best already, among them World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper. No World Cup could ever match the emotional cachet of South Africa in 1995, but for organisation, support, atmosphere and revelry, the 2015 edition may well be the best World Cup of them all. It’s been a blast, even from afar.
Worryingly, the tournament also reminded us of the uncomfortably high rate of attrition suffered by top-end players. The game is more relentless than ever and demands more physically than at any time in its history. Great players, chief among them Jean de Villiers and Paul O’Connell, were felled by this reality and it robbed the event of some of its appeal.
But the good far outweighs the bad. RWC 2015 has had everything: tension, excitement, shocks, Mamuka Gorgodze, brotherhood, beer. Even a yellow card for Richie McCaw.
‘I moustache you a question, but I’ll shave it for later.’ – Anonymous.
