If you wanted to understand why no South African team has ever won the Super 12 you could do no better than study the four games that made up two-thirds of round two of the competition this year. In Canberra on Friday a Bulls side that bases its entire tactical approach upon a dominant pack and a reliable goal kicker scrummed poorly and missed vital kicks.
Any discussion of Birmingham City and their trophy-less fans starts on the basis of sympathy. This is only partly to do with Steve Bruce’s current failure to produce in the Blues any kind of high-powered Premiership resurrection. It has do to with their accent (think Nigell Mansell) and their city, a huge concrete jungle that is essentially Dullsville UK.
Chelsea were on an emotional peak at the close of the win over Barcelona but Jose Mourinho is still in the foothills of his mission in England. The manager has said as much before when predicting that the best of his team will not be seen until his third year at Stamford Bridge. Tuesday brought one of the most memorable nights in the club’s history but it also showed just what Mourinho meant.
Cairo, as well as being the site of many of the world’s greatest, most mysterious treasures, is a pollution-ridden, overpopulated, not particularly pretty city. That this does not completely overwhelm its charms is actually the greatest miracle of all. It is brilliant if you haven’t much time to squeeze all the sights in — you can get to the great pyramid in about 15 minutes from central Cairo.
Olympic inspectors visiting Paris were among a lucky minority able to move freely around the French capital on Thursday as public sector workers brought the country grinding to a halt, severely disrupting buses, trains and flights, shutting schools and leaving papers undelivered and radio stations silent.
REM rocked Jo’burg on Thursday night and, as usual, didn’t disappoint. In terms of value for money, patrons certainly got what they paid for — the hits just went on and on and on, with the lighting system adding real gloss to the presentation. Lisa Johnston was there.
A pair of spectacles, a set of keys, a student card, a watch, a few euros, a single grey trainer. Rita Betancourt removes the objects delicately from a small green box and places them on the table of the immaculate suburban home where she and her husband, Luis Tenesaca, now live alone.
For two days next week, the battle over drugs pricing will move to the Constitutional Court as Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang takes on pharmacy groups. The Health Department will ask the country’s highest court for permission to appeal in a bid to overturn a Supreme Court of Appeal judgement, which threw out ”transparent pricing” regulations last year.
While it’s not a new idea to get pop stars to do Cole Porter’s songs for this movie, <i>De-Lovely</i> has managed to keep the approach traditional, without trying to spruce up Porter’s work for the MTV generation, writes Riaan Wolmarans.
Although it’s a movie about boxing and contains any number of neatly staged fight scenes,it is about fathers and daughters, real or ersatz, and about emotional remoteness and proximity, and doing one last good-bad thing before you die.Black boxers took on the world and knocked it flying, but Hollywood is more concerned with white ones, writes John Patterson.