Good Greeff, Jake’s picks laid bare

FINDING a Frenchman in the Top 14 is becoming increasingly difficult and Montpellier coach Jake White stretched the point against La Rochelle last week. In fact, White fielded more Du Plessis’s (Jannie, Bismarck, Jacques and Willie) than Frenchmen in his starting lineup. Only three Frenchmen cracked the nod in White’s team and Montpellier lost 37-40.

IT’S not often that someone who had just been red-carded gets a standing ovation. However, Stade Français’s talismanic lock Pascal Papé, in his last home match, received a rousing departure with his teammates on the bench leading the chorus last weekend. Papé, 36, spent almost 10 years at the club and irrespective of the nefarious acts he may have been involved in against Racing 92, he was always going to get a boisterous sendoff.

HERE at Tightheads, we are guided by one simple principle — ’No one’s safe’. A colleague, who shall remain unnamed, has been showing off pronouncing Retshegofaditswe ’Ox’ Nché. Whenever he referred to the Cheetahs’ loosehead, he would make the point of rolling off his tongue ’Retshegofaditswe’. You can’t begin to imagine how mortified Tightheads was this week when the said colleague finished a telephonic interview with Retshegofaditswe ’Ox’ Nché, saying ’thank you, Trevor’.

SPEAKING of names, one name jumped out at Tightheads when the Junior Springbok team was named this week. If Lee-Marvin Mazibuko, the former Michaelhouse prop, is as rebellious as late, tough guy actor Lee Marvin, he’s going to be a handful. At four, actor Marvin ran away from home and was missing for two days. He was expelled from several exclusive boarding schools, on one occasion for throwing a roommate from the second-floor window.

SPRINGBOK scrumhalf Ruan Pienaar was set to make an emotional farewell for Ulster last night. After seven season, Pienaar will call it quits in Belfast, after the Irish Rugby Football Union refused to sanction another contract extension. The IRFU is limiting the number of foreign players in their four provincial sides. Some Ulstermen are furious, believing Pienaar is their best ever import.

TELEVISION match official Johan Greeff wasn’t going to get off lightly after he blundered by not awarding a try to the Cheetahs when they played the Crusaders in Bloemfontein last week. At half time, in the media dining area, a journalist asked Greeff while he was watching firsthalf highlights on a TV screen. ’Did you see that angle, Johan?’ Greeff’s mumbled response was as convincing as his earlier decision.