A stellar season for the Pinelands Mighty Dodos, the planet’s definitive celebrity hockey side, comes to an end tomorrow afternoon, with promotion already confirmed for next season (at this rate, we’ll be playing in the 2016 Olympics). Appropriate, then, that yesterday’s Qantas flight should deliver one of the icons of modern Dodos folklore: former skipper Matt Garrett, now resident in the village of Sydney, and rather important at Fox Sports. Which makes him an ideal person to pass on news of the Australian sporting psyche; tragically, it would appear the poor dears are in a very fragile state at the moment.

The Ashes hit Australia particularly hard, apparently, the newspapers leading a nation’s cry of anguish, with the general consensus being that the entire team should have been lined up against a wall and shot upon returning home. But the fury lasted just a day or two, and then disappeared from the national media, to replaced by a national state of denial. Ashes? Nope, mate, don’t know what you’re on about. Ricky who?

But the rugby’s been a little harder to shrug off, even if union sits below league, Australian rules, soccer, cricket, and the amorous pursuit of anything woollen, in the list of popular endeavour in New Zealand’s largest colony. Without a win in this year’s Tri-Nations, beaten twice on home turf, and with a crunch game against a marauding Springbok side awaiting in Brisbane tomorrow, Australian rugby is bruised and battered, and the Australian media is making sure that the country’s well aware of that fact.

And the Wallabies are certainly having a tough time, but you have to wonder how justified severe criticism is of a team that’s slowly trying to build itself up. Last week’s loss wasn’t as close as the eventual margin suggested, but the Wallaby pack came out on top in the scrums, the backline had its moments, and crucially, some very young players got put through what is currently rugby’s toughest challenge: facing John Smit’s Springboks. There’s a World Cup on the horizon, and in two years this could turn out to be a very dangerous Wallaby team.

Two years is more than enough to rebuild; a week isn’t, and the Springboks are determined to wrap up the Tri-Nations with a game to go. Jean de Villiers has been insisting this week that there’s more to come from the South Africans, and just as last week’s expansive game surprised critics of the Bok approach, so the side’s capacity to reinvent itself has another platform to do just that on Saturday. And that’s the joy of watching this Springbok team in action: the rugby isn’t just excellent, it’s multi-dimensional, creative, intelligent. Which is why we’re top of the pile at the moment, and revelling in it.

I won’t be watching the game, sadly — Henri Vaulbert de Chantilly, arguably Mauritius’s greatest ever rugby player (not dissimilar to being Malawi’s greatest cricketer, I suppose, but still), is getting married at the same time, and so I shall be indulging in the trappings of an island wedding — but news will filter through quickly of a Springbok victory, a Tri-Nations title, and another glorious weekend of rugby. Celebrations in Mauritius, then, as well as across South Africa (particularly if the Dodos wrap up the season with another victory) — and more gloom and doom across Australia. Savour it, mind, for this Wallaby side is only going to get better.

  • Base jumping the world’s deepest cave in China, taking mountain bikes along fences and banisters and leaping from ledge to ledge, walking ropes stretched between peaks, with the world falling away beneath; throw in the usual dose of lunatic snow activity, and you’ve got another year of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It’s always a fascinating collection of short films that pay tribute to man’s obsession to pushing the boundaries of human endeavour, and this year the film-making is particularly dynamic; it’s on at Cavendish Square this weekend, so if you’re at a loose end and fancy some vicarious adrenaline, swing by.

  • Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za


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