A silver lining?, where?

South Africa's sole medal winner, Khotso Mokoena during a press conference at the Southern Sun, OR Tambo in Johannesburg airport after team SA returned home from the Beijing Olympics.A lot has been said about SA's poor performance during the Olympics, in fact, in relation to the number of athletes sent, SA was the worst performing team in the entire world. Now for a country that is widely regarded as a sporting country, that is just not on.

I personally believe that the powers that be have been sticking their political, undercover rascist noses into the team a bit too much, but we can leave that for another post :)

One of the talking points is the funding aspect. Other countries have spent much more money on their teams than ours, personally I reckon that they should bin the team, spend the money on trying to get rid of informal settlements and putting poor people in houses.

Now thats an idea!
Mokoena won a silver medal in the long jump.

More rugby, man!

Vodacom Cheetahs from Free-State play Xerox Lions from Johannesburg at Coca Cola Park, (ex Ellis Park) in Johannesburg. The Cheetahs won 38-28 during a action filled match.I've decided that I'm going to shoot a lot of rugby from now on, including the smaller provincial matches with a view to using them as a practice for the international matches. One of my new short term goals is to win the SASOL Springbok Photographer of the Year next year.
So wish me luck... and watch this space :)

This is gonna hurt!

Argentina's Patricio Albacete runs into Percy Montgomery, Luke Watson and Pierre Spies during the test between Argentina at Coca Cola Park in Johannesburg that the Springboks won 63-9.CJ Van Der Linde and Beast Mtawarira on the attack.

Two example of pics I shot during the test between Argentina and South Africa showing Argentinians thinking, "oh, no , this is gonna hurt!"

Mandela's long birthday party

Bafana Bafana and the Springboks light candles on two cakes to wish Nelson Mandela a belated Happy Birthday at the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Even though Nelson Mandela's birthday is on the 18 July, celebrations still continue. Today the South African football and rugby teams visited him under the glare of the worlds media. The media piles in to the Nelson Mandela Foundation's small, poorly lit auditorium, as they always do when Mandela is involved. The two teams gave him a big cake each, they lit the candles, sung happy birthday, and shared a joke or two.

As I was leaving I noticed the untouched cakes being packed into boxes, "I'm sure he and everyone around him is sick of cake by now", I thought to myself. I found out later that after the throngs of media left the Foundation, a small group of people including Mandela visited a small hospice in Alexandra unannounced to give them the cakes...

I liked that...

Getting the call up..

Manchester United striker, Wayne Rooney coasts the ball past Kaizer Chiefs goalkeeper, Khune Itumeleng during the final of the Vodacom Challenge yesterday. As was widely expected, European Champions and English Premier League champions, Manchester United won 4-0, but the match was played in good spirits and was loved by the many Manchester United and Kaizer Chiefs fans in South Africa.

I shot the final match of the Vodacom Challenge, which by its self was great, as the photographers are on the field right behind the goal line, one of my personal highlights was when the ball rolled out for a corner, straight to me and Ryan Giggs gestured for me to pass it to him. So, I gave it a sweeping kick straight to him (He then turned around to look at Sir Alex Ferguson, and pointed to me, so I guess I can expect the call-up for the first team any day now), OK, that bit didn't happen, but maybe it should have, as on Sunday in my weekly Action Soccer game, I scored within the first 20 seconds of the game and ended up with a hat trick, so I reckon they should consider giving me a call soon :)