That paragon of racial equality, the South African Rugby Football Union (SARFU), has illustrated just how well it has adapted to the new South Africa and how enthusiastic it is in nurturing a cultural shift away from racial discrimination. While we watched the South African soccer team, comprised of three white players and eight black players, lose to France in their first match of the World Cup, we could also see the South African rugby team, comprised of 15 white players, defeat Ireland in their first test at Bloemfontein.
Body-colour counts are an anathema to most international teams, but there is an inescapable jarring effect in watching an African team play without any ethnic Africans involved. It seems utterly implausible for a nation of 42 million, most of whom are black, not to be able to cultivate one non-white current international rugby player. Isn't it great that apartheid has been confined to the history books.
Dennis Rodman may be the bete noir of the basketball court but his idiosyncrasies - posing nude for Playboy, wrestling for $250,000 when he should have been training with the Chicago Bulls, escorting pop singer Madonna to an array of night clubs, hitting referees, fighting with his own players and punching photographers - expressed themselves in another way this week in the aftermath of the brutal slaying of James Byrd jnr in Texas.
Byrd, a black man, was brutally trailed along the road from the back of a pickup truck until he died. Three white men, suspected of being white supremacists, were arrested for the murder. Rodman, who has clearly never worried about having a clean image, offered to pay the funeral expenses of the dead man and pledged $25,000 for the education of Byrd's children. A week's wages with the Bulls no doubt, but, to how many Premiership soccer players would it have occurred to make a personal and essentially symbolic donation to a women's organisation in the light of the deeds of Collymore, Gascoigne et al. Right . . . none.
"The Man With No Name" (well, Clint Eastwood) is apparently a golf fanatic who has been playing the game for 50 years or more. He's a member of three golf courses in California and owns a golf club in the same state.
The first and only actor since the silent movie days to play the lead role in a western where there was a masterful fifteen minutes with no dialogue at all is now stumped over filming a book about golf.
Eastwood has bought the rights of a book about the sport but thinks it is too difficult to make into a film. Transferring a book about golf and spiritual development onto the screen is impossibly hard because it's a "metaphysical" story, says the Hollywood star.
This "metaphysical" stuff. Never mind golf. What are we to make of The Good The Bad And The Ugly, For A Few Dollars More and A Fistful Of Dollars.
This week the biggest draw in boxing, Oscar De La Hoya, recorded his 28th victory in 28 outings, 23 of them inside the distance. De La Hoya is a boxing phenomenon.
Over 50,000 people watched him defeat Frenchman Patrick Carpentier in the third round at El Paso, Texas last weekend. The Mexican American has now won world titles at super featherweight, lightweight, light welterweight and welterweight, and now he is sizing up the light middleweight division for a fifth title at a different weight. Not surprisingly, the 1992 Olympic gold medallist now gets £6.5 million per bout, much more than anyone else in the business bar the handful of boxers who make up the cream of the heavyweight division.
The 25-year-old's popularity with teenagers has transcended boxing and in the pay-to-view market 30 per cent of customers are women under the age of 25. Last year De La Hoya earned £38 million from five fights. In his fight with Carpentier the European landed all of five punches before the lights went out. De La Hoya earned over £1 million for every punch he took.
Tired of the Jimmy Hill? Tired of Alan Hansen? Tired of Bill O'Herlihy? Tired of the World Cup? Well, the OCI cinema in Tallaght have encountered this backlash before. Four years ago Ireland's involvement in US '94 threw the country into lunacy and UCI are now running a "Hollywood Hunks" series to satisfy all of those World Cup widows who have to listen to the tiresome retailing of the "expertise" of their partners every night for a month. "Hopefully it will attract people away from their televisions to see the best looking men in Hollywood. "To some extent it works, but we find it hard to compete with football," says Brendan Quigley, general manager of the complex.
