Sunday Times

Tightheads & Loose Balls

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● “The coaching team is very close. We like to play cards. We walk together. Like tomorrow we have a day off so we are planning maybe to go to the Blue or the Rocky Mountains. We are very united. When we focus, we focus, and when we relax, we relax properly,” said Lions coach Swys de Bruin from Sydney this week. It all sounds a bit like a remake of 2005’s most talked about movie and Swys missed a trick by not inviting Israel Folau.

● We all know about Thomas du Toit’s versatilit­y in the front row but it seems his dexterity knows no bounds. “I’m busy painting the house,” the prop told us this week. “The people who used to live here was mad about yellow. We’re not that mad about yellow.”

● Du Toit may be improving as a tighthead but his teething battles aren't quite over, as Stormers prop JC Janse van Rensburg reminded him last week. After one scrum in which Du Toit “popped”, the Stormers’ man demanded to know: “What are the pictures like up there boet?”

● A veteran scribe’s phone broke the eerie silence in the Loftus press box last week. He fumbled to switch it off, not so much because of the intrusion, as the revelation of his ringtone, the Distructio­n Boyz's hit Omunye. We have it on good authority he felt so bad he booked an overseas holiday to get over the ordeal.

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