It’s rugby season again folks. For Wales fans such as myself, this means six weeks of heartache and frustration, interrupted by fleeting moments of unfulfilled hope. Most Six Nations tournaments offer us the joy that is gazing upon the physique of Scrum Half Mike Phillips, but he’s shacked up with Duffy now and is pretending to be injured while he lives off her royalties. It’s over between us.
Wales lost their Six Nations opener to England yesterday, and my housemates saw a new side to me. Mum said today that she’d made up a new word in her agony (“dickwit” apparently describes Alun Wyn Jones) while I spent most of the 80 minutes writhing on the floor in front of the telly chewing on my fingers. So, this afternoon me and the old gits went to the pictures to watch a rugby match that we knew would have a happy ending; the new Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon thing about the 1995 World Cup in South Africa.
Morgan Freeman has finally got around to playing Nelson Mandela, and it’s obviously taken him so long because the voice coach was at the end of her tether. He just talks like Morgan Freeman, except maybe a bit slower. Matt Damon is surprisingly good, and the match scenes were authentic, but there was this bit where Mandela flew into a training session in a helicopter and this fucking appalling soft rock tune boomed out. It had the clumsiest, most obvious lyrics ever, about being “colourblind” and shit, while Mandela’s giving Matt Damon an envelope of fucking poetry to get him through the tournament. Worst scene in the film. It was only a short blip though, and the rest was actually pretty brilliant, especially a scene where the whole team goes and does a coaching session with some street kids in the slums. You can see it in everyone’s faces that they’re having a real ball getting involved with these tragic little urchins for the day. The kids were having the time of their lives.
That settles it then. Mike Phillips and I have a psychological connection that steers the entire fate of the British and Irish Lions in South Africa.
I went downstairs earlier to warm up another tasty budget ready meal from the Tesco range of over-hydrated rice products, and the Lions were just finished the first half of tonight’s match against the Sharks, part of the South Africa tour. The score was shockingly low, 7 - 3 or something. So then play stopped and I ate some curried rice mush and then play started again and I began to get those funny Mike Phillips flutterings, and then suddenly I was all like swoon and “be careful of his beautiful face!” and then within about a minute he had scored this sweet try. Because I was watching, and sending my I-Love-Mike-Phillips vibes all the way to Africa.
And I’m pretty sure some of them rubbed off on Lee Byrne because he was fucking amazing too, so quick, although that Phil Vickery guy still looks like a cross between a Salford doorman and Crabbe and Goyle from Harry Potter. With some potato genes mixed in too.
The Sharks were sponsored by some dude called Mr Price, so they all had Mr Price written on their shirts, which was super-confusing to begin with because I was surprised to find that Price was such a common name in South Africa. Then I realised my schoolboy mistake and vowed to have the Welsh rugby team in Miss Vaughan shirts by 2020. What? It could happen.
Final score: Lions 39, Sharks 3. Mike Phillips: 10,000 hottie points.
