Verdict: carrot
Who has the worst swing of any successful golfer? Which Springbok rugby personality sidestepped Australian passport control … twice?
These are just some of the questions answered in Talking Balls.
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Verdict: mostly carrots. It’s Troy Blacklaws’ Bafana Bafana wot gets the stick.
ANY rugby fan will cherish this book [Mauled] on the Castle South Africa 2009 Lions series which took place throughout last year.
As a photographer I’m going to be biased right from the start and say it’s the images that made me grab this book faster than Victor Matfield or Bakkies Botha ever could – and hold onto it.
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Scribd.com book preview:
Springbok Miscellany: From the earliest days to the modern era
Verdict: carrot that looks, at first, like a stick
LET’S deal with the criticism first. This isn’t “the story of African football” as the subtitle claims, but a series of extended, largely country-based, essays. Much of their focus is on international competition. A chapter on South Africa, misleadingly titled “Burial of the Springbok”, shows a dismal understanding of its football history that confuses terminology, events and eras with gay abandon. Meanwhile, the main town of QwaQwa, Phuthaditjhaba (predictably misspelt), apparently suffers from the “fierce rain of the lowveld [and] its beating sun”.
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Uitspraak: wortel
Geen ander kaptein ter wêreld het soveel bykomende kwessies op sy skouers nie.
Suid-Afrika, met sy reënboognasie, soos Smit reeds in die tweede hoofstuk lostrek, is uniek. En dit bring soms unieke probleme vir die span mee.
Hoewel Smit dit nie in soveel woorde sê nie, sluit hy hom aan by sy eweknie van die Suid-Afrikaanse krieketspan, Graeme Smith, wat in A Captain’s Diary 2007 lof vir die Proteas het omdat hulle ondanks al die beweerde woelinge van die veld af tog bo uitgekom het.
Boekbesonderhede
Verdict: stick, but not for John Carlin’s book
Aside from Morgan Freeman, who makes a fabulous Nelson Mandela, there’s this to savor about Invictus, a rosy tale of racial reconciliation neatly wrapped in a triumphalist sports movie: The film is blessedly free of Obama parallels. Also, we could use a happy global moment, and Eastwood picks one out of the otherwise rocky history of South Africa, when the country’s first post-apartheid president stepped out of the jail where he’d languished for 27 years and firmly set aside revenge politics in favor of national unity.
More than most, Mandela understood the cohesive power of the symbol—in this case, the bright green uniform of the South African rugby team the Springboks, echoing the flag equally beloved by whites and hated by blacks under apartheid. Adapted by South African writer Anthony Peckham from a book by former London Independent journalist John Carlin, Invictus tells the story of how Mandela, with help from the Afrikaner team captain, Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon, gym-pumped into Michelin Man and oozing fair play), turned a World Cup rugby match into a moment of rainbow solidarity.
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Verdict: stick
So Joost van der Westhuizen had a book written about himself to confirm what we all knew anyway . . . that he has holes in his underpants.
It seems there were as many holes in Joost’s story relating to his matinee cocktail of drugs, sex and socks and roll as there are in his well-publicised briefs.
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Verdict: stick
It would appear that the book’s content has been restricted to (this) Bishop and close mates, with the addition of a few high-profile writers. In this respect the authors/editors may well have dropped the ball. You will find anecdotal material – some current, some from the archives – about Gary Player, Hugh Tayfield, Jake White, Pat Symcox and Bruce Fordyce and many other sporting icons.
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Verdict: carrot
The Springbok Miscellany is the perfect addition to an avid rugby fan’s collection.
For the rugby fan who has everything – like the 11 derivatives of the national team’s jersey since readmission to the game in 1992, helpfully reprinted in the inside plates of this book – then this handy sized guide is just for you.
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Verdict: stick
It’s the book that became an overnight cause célebre – before anyone had read it. Joost: the Man in the Mirror had the publishers announcing a sold-out first run 24 hours after releasing the book.
It seemed too good to be true for the book the big Sunday papers used to trumpet: “Joost bares all, read all about it”.
Unfortunately it was (a) too good to be true and (b) wishful thinking on the part of the sub-editors who wrote the posters.
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Image courtesy WhosWho
Verdict: carrot
FOR once, with this review I resolved to read this book cover to cover instead of just skim-reading (for R4,40 you didn’t actually think Witness reviewers read the whole book, did you?).
The main reason was that, with this being the book of my ex-boss and mentor, recently retired Witness sports editor of 35 years, John Bishop, along with Tiki Dickson, the review was a terrifying prospect for obvious reasons.
Happily, reading the whole of Talking Balls was no chore at all — and overwhelmingly a pleasure.
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