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A good week for ...
This is what passes for a footie jersey in French club rugby. It's the new kit for Stade Francais, the club that made headlines with raunchy calendars featuring players suggestively draped all over each other. Can't really see it taking off in Waitete.
SuperShorts loves Kevin Costner movies - after all, if an actor that bad can make it into Hollywood, surely a rugby player as useless as SuperShorts could find himself in the All Blacks (well, it worked for Adam Thompson).
Fans of Russell Crowe's 30 Odd Foot of Grunts will be delighted to know that Costner and his band, Modern West, have recorded a track to inspire his favourite baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays. It's All Up To You features such rockin' lines as:
"You got to swing for the fence, give a hundred per cent,
"Dust yourself off, get up and do it again.
"You're the only one that can make your dreams come true.
"You're the only one, it's all up to you."
It certainly made SuperShorts feel inspired enough to swing a baseball bat, albeit at the stereo.
Liverpool squeaked a five-goal thriller at Eastlands, and the winner came from the forgotten man of the Reds' strike force, Dirk Kuyt. Reputable source Popbitch assures us that Kuyt was Dutch air-guitar champion for four years running.
Oldest of the old school, the great Harry Redknapp doesn't care much for modern methods. He won our affection with a two-footed tackle on the burgeoning soccer management career of that gimp Clive Woodward at Southampton and has this to say about nutrition. "We've got sports scientists who insist it's important for the lads to eat after games to refuel, even if it's 2am. I used to refuel after games at West Ham until half past three in the morning in a different way - but then I'm old school."
It's a sad day for beef and lamb as we say adieu to the Evers-Swindells. The Hawkes Bay pair gave New Zealand two of our greatest recent sporting moments and, happily, contrived the circumstances that set up "Great Moments in World Sport as Commentated by Peter Montgomery". SuperShorts says "thanks, ladies".
A bad week for ...
The romantic charms of the South Canterbury rugby team were lost on a hostess aboard an Air New Zealand domestic flight last weekend. She took exception to a player's spadework as the team travelled from Gisborne to Wellington. South Canterbury coach Ken Wills, who was asleep when the chat up went down, said: "One of the guys was trying to use a pick-up line and exchange text numbers."
The selection of journeyman Darren Pattinson (an Aussie) for the England cricket team to face South Africa at Headingley in July was widely criticised. Now the man himself has given the selectors a serve: "I probably didn't agree with the selection, as it was. I don't think I'd pick someone to play the one test when haven't really played that many first-class games and weren't in the squad. If I were in [the selectors'] situation, I wouldn't have picked me to play for England."
As if recording their worst start in 96 years wasn't bad enough, Spurs is being investigated by police over allegations of racial and homophobic abuse directed at Portsmouth captain Sol Campbell. Disgracefully, Hampshire Police had initially said it was not possible to make arrests because of the sheer numbers chanting at the former Tottenham centre-half. Though it seems the North Londoners could be getting back on track. Ramos has figured out a core principle of the beautiful game: "When you don't score goals it is not easy to win."
To think New Zealand rugby fans have doubts about the wisdom of the All Blacks coaching panel. The technical staff of second division Zimbabwean side Midland Portland Cement told their players to swim in a crocodile-infested stretch of the Zambezi in a ritual to cleanse the team of bad spirits before a match. Sixteen players went in - only 15 came out.
