Big Daddy Rugby

picture from Lady Rugga's twitter account at @elmakapelma

DSTV’s questionable talent contest to find a female rugby presenter has been finalized and the easy on the eye Elma Smit will be traveling to New Zealand to cover the World Cup as DSTV’s “Lady Rugga”. Initially we were against the idea of the competition – it seemed a bit chauvinistic. After all none of the other Supersport presenters would survive a talent show that actually required being liked by viewers…

But you seem like a nice person and you’ve got your own blog going which is a great start, so we thought we’d give you a message of support and advice from the rugby blogging community.

Elma, or should I say Lady Rugga:

Please don’t drop the ball… we want you to succeed. It would be great to have more female representation in a male dominated sports setup. We’d love it if you embarrassed the chauvinists DSTV who simply wanted someone for their looks by showing them that you have a greater level knowledge of the game than Darren Scott and Hugh Bladen.  It’s really not that hard.

You’ve simply actually got to watch the games being discussed and occasionally watch a few replays.  Showing up the foolishness of what passes for analysis on DSTV is best done best done by watching the replay moments before a try is scored and pointing out either a) that Habana was off his wing or b) which player was guilty of the aimless kick down field which set up the counter attack.  If you can do that, you already know more than Hugh Bladen.

Please also avoid falling into often repeated blunders that your fellow Supersport commentators make.  Avoid the use of the following:

• Referring to a match as a “game of two halves” (please also punch any fellow presenter who tries this)
• shout-outs to the school that a try scorer graduated from
• asking a captain who just lost a match if he is disappointed with the result
• reveal a lack of vocabulory by simply repeating a players name in increasing levels of loudness as he charges towards the line
• implying that the referee is a biased against the Boks (that’s so 1994)
• repeating any phrases that Bobby Skinstad uses or his strange pronounciation of “bokke”

Avoid those and you should be well received by true fans everywhere.  There is one thing we’d like to point out though that we are very worried about though…

Hmm... that's a bit disturbing.

Elma’s blog can be found here.

Tags: Darren Scott, DSTV, Elma Smit, Hugh Bladen, Lady Rugga, Supersport