Gentlemen & Thugs

For all you 'roadtrip' fans, the Nelspruit story will continue in next posting, but this time I just had to write about my newly found passion: Rugby! No, I will not spend the next years eating a pig for breakfast, a cow for dinner, smashing beer cans against my head and counting leftover teeth in front of a mirror. No I'll just watch the sport once every four years and only from the quarter finals onwards.

Maputo is very close to the South African border and that means that a lot of South African influences are noticeable. For starters, they obviously drive on the wrong side of the road, even though this used to be a Portuguese colony and even those small chubby and hairy Iberians know which side one should drive.

Second, 95% of Mozambican tourism is South African, the Rand currency is widely accepted, all large South African companies have a presence here (e.g. mobile phone, cable TV, hypermarkets) and, apart from CNN and BBC World, the only interesting TV channels here are South African.

Okay, I lied. There's one absolutely brilliant local TV show called Fama Show. It's when Idols falls in love with Next Top Model and they decide to have a baby. If something goes horribly wrong during conception you get a creature called Fama Show. That is definitely one show they should've aborted way before birth. The participants are hopeless: as singers, dancers and as models. It's like putting myself and most of you on TV to sing, dance and look nice, and actually expect sponsors to line up.

A typical scene would be a participant trying to sing a pop song in English. Not only will it be extremely false, but also with a heavy accent which makes the song totally not understandable. You think you know the song, but it sounds like it's sung in Russian. In the meanwhile there is some dancing going on, including some support dancers. How do I explain this scene? Hmmm, for those of you familiar with Curaçao TV, the dancers on Telefiesta are 10 times better synchronised! For you not familiar with this Caribbean classic, just look at Britney Spears' performance during the last MTV Awards and imagine something even worse. Oh baby baby! Hit me baby one more time!

Back to rugby! For the last months 'local' South African TV (Supersport channels 1 through 7) had been advertising the upcoming world cup. Every TV ad had either a rugby player in it or a reference to a rugby player, pitch, coach or a ball. (By the way, aren't balls supposed to be round?)

Finally 7 September came, the start of the World Cup. I was curious to see what the fuss had been about. Is the game I never really watched any fun? Would it be a cool game to watch? Would I get into it? But at first, only disappointment. The first three weeks of this tournament had some 40 games, most of them extremely predictable. Maybe Argentina beating France could, with some imagination, be considered a major upset.

For the rest it was yawn yawn yawn. New Zealand beating Romania 142-10 or so. I lost count and probably so did the referee. Portugal and others being sent home with little chance of scoring. And yes, the Portuguese had a player which looked 50+, was short, very chubby and and very hairy (in the wrong places). At first, I thought Danny DeVito played for Portugal.

Was this a real world cup? It looked like a Ripley's Believe It Or Not freakshow! Come see the man with 5 bellies!

Luckily for me, I was in Holland for most of the first round, therefore 'missing' out on all the rugby fun. Once I got back it was time for the real thing... so every expert assured me.

I decided, if I wanted to get into it I better pick a favourite. My overall favourites were the Kiwi's or All-Blacks as they're known by in rugby circles. On a side note: the New Zealand national basketball team is nicknamed the Tall Blacks (I am now wondering who over there calls themselves the Ball Blacks or Fall Blacks). Well, my favs were knocked out in the quarters and every other team I picked lost, apart from Argentina. They went on to claim 3rd place in the end.

But what a fun game to watch!!! Especially in a bar full of fanatic South African supporters. South Africa's nickname is Springbokke, or just Bokke for short. These guys really get into it.

The game is like watching a bunch of (really big) kids fighting over a frisbee on the beach. They all pile on each other, pushing, shoving, sometimes even fighting. It is hilarious! They even have rules! I have no clue what these are, but sometimes while bodies are flying all over your screen (like in the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan), the ref all of a sudden blows a whistle and claims to have seen something. Probably some ripped off arm and that can obviously not be allowed.

My favourite moments? Two of them! The first, during one of the games things got heated up and two opposing players started getting into a real brawl. The ref whistled really loudly and got them apart. As a proper football fan I sat there and expected some more protesting and pushing, followed by two red cards. In rugby, the ref just says in the tone of your second grade teacher: "Don't spoil a great game!". The two guys, both the size of an American refrigerator, just bow their heads, nod shamefully and everything is fine. That's it! Amazing! Like the guy next to me in the bar said: "Football is a game of gentlemen, played by thugs and rugby is a game of thugs, played by gentlemen".

But the absolute highlight for me was seeing the Springbokke and their fans sing the South African national anthem before the final. I have never ever seen a national anthem being sung with so much passion and pride. And by each and every player and supporter. And it's a unique anthem It has 4 stanza's and is written in 5 official languages: Xhosa (first stanza, first two lines), Zulu (first stanza, last two lines), Sesotho (second stanza), Afrikaans (third stanza) and English (final stanza). In the end the South Africans claimed the title and I spent half the night listening to drunk guys 'n gals shouting 'Go Bokke!'.

PS: If any small hairy chubby Iberian feels insulted, I apologise. There's very little to be taken seriously when it comes to opinions expressed by myself in this blog. There's absolutely nothing wrong about being small, hairy and chubby. However, being Iberian is a burden you will have to carry forever... ;-)