Living with Lions

[PaarlBok]

You may want a different example to Colin Meads on an Aussie board - some here still remember his incident on Ken Catchpole which kind of ended Catchpole's career. Without starting an argument about the rights and wrongs and whether there was intent, Meads is perhaps not held in as high regard here as he is by you and Kiwis!

Frik du Preez and Meads duals is legendary. Two hard basttards, when playing no ince ask no inch given. Know nothing about Catchpole but Colin Meads I am sure is the highest rated All Black in SA.

I do remember Skinner or something, a All Black and boxer that moered the kak of a Bok team many moons ago. But thats the way they played those days.

If I look at the way our kids play they sort of dont stand back when the going gets tough. Thats just the way it is. The Soutie lot is totally different but here they get stuck in the hard yards.

 

[Biffo]

I have just remembered another rugby player who did know how to punch: Steve Finnane, aka The Gunfighter

I am not writing of blokes who are handy in brawls or the street. I am writing of blokes properly trained and having learned how to do the maximum damage with one hit - which, coincidentally, is the same punch which is hardest for the observer to detect.

Both Crowley and Finnane really did know their hitting trade.

 

[Red Beard]

Keith Robinson wouldn't happen to be one would he RB? 8)

He would certainly be one I would advise all and sundry to keep a wide berth from when tempers fray.

 

[Red Beard]

I have just remembered another rugby player who did know how to punch: Steve Finnane, aka The Gunfighter

I am not writing of blokes who are handy in brawls or the street. I am writing of blokes properly trained and having learned how to do the maximum damage with one hit - which, coincidentally, is the same punch which is hardest for the observer to detect.

Both Crowley and Finnane really did know their hitting trade.

Plenty of guys have been taught how to throw a punch but struggle in a live situation and this is where 'streetfighters' shit all over 'boxers'. Being able to take a punch is also more useful than being able to land one. I used to work on the door with a 130kg Samoan powerlifter and former boxer who had the rep for being the toughest man in Hamilton. He reckoned judo was the best fighting skill to have, because most boxers were way out of their depth as soon as they had been grabbed by the collar, flung into a wall, tripped up and and had a few steel caps to their head.

Ive been in many extremely violent situations while working involving large groups sometimes mobs of heavily intoxicated and violent people and king hitters generally dont last the distance in these scenarios. The guys who could really handle themselves were the ex Mongrel Mob members I worked with, none of whom had ever been taught how to fight but had street smarts. Im not saying for a second that Dan Crowley couldnt handle himself very well in extreme situations, I have no doubt he could. But Ive seen first hand that not everybody who was taught to self defence at Police College can actually apply it in the street. Ive also seen guys who grew up in places like Otara clean up far more fancied opponents.

You only have to look at the Fight for Life bouts run in NZ every year to see how many ex Kiwis and ABs showed quite alot of fighting acumen for guys who had never stepped in a ring before.

 

[Pfitzy]

Being able to take a punch is also more useful than being able to land one.

Absolutely - if you can't stay in the fight, then you're already beaten. The hardest bit for the idiots who throws the first punch is they don't think about what will happen after it. When the damage comes back to them they collapse. That's why my big brother had it all over me as a kid: I couldn't take the hit

The judo thing is a good plan for anyone who wants to defend themselves - it covers all situations. Aikido and Hapkido are good too because they're all about movement, evasion, and using your opponent's weight against them. Its not necessarily about hurting the other bloke either (which I personally don't enjoy doing) but making sure you can still function while wearing them down.

 

[Biffo]

Someone commented that MacRae did not know how to hit. My comments have been on the subject of rugby players being able to hit someone effectively on the rugby field - I have seen very few who can. Street fights, brawls or martial arts contests ... however bizarre they may be ... are a completely different matter.

Effectiveness of a punch on the rugby field depends on its being accurate, swift and forceful and preferably, unseen. Given that the referee and his assistants are sure to blow the whistle fairly quickly, whether the contestant can stay in a fight for minutes and overwhelm an opponent is almost completely irrelevant.

 

[PaarlBok]

Still think the head butters won most battles. If a guy have that skill theyr deadly. Not meaning going head first in but grabbing the opposites shoulders into the head. Adri Geldenhuys & AJ Venter have that bit of a trick. Had a guy played rugby with me, also a lock :lmao:, Arend Brynard, he was that kind of bastard. After many games we drove far distances we had to go for a night cap in the bar before going home. This vokker use to past out while driving but Boet dont let him wake up in the car outside the Hotel while we still drinking. In no time he sort of looking for them and he use to pick the diamond divers, a rough rough breed from where I come from. Luckily he was the nicest calmest guy if he was sober but deadly in a bar or between the four lines.

 

[Scarfman]

Agree about the uselessness of boxing. I have trained at boxing for a few years and I would clean up any of you who hasn't trained, as long as we're fightng Marquis of Queensbury with a proper ref.

But in the street or pub when someone crashes into you - almost no advantage at all.