It hasn’t taken long for the bullshit merchants to crank it up at the World Cup. Not surprisingly it’s taken us Kiwis to set the bar for the coming weeks.
Clothing manufacturer Canterbury of NZ claim to have invented a top that increases performance by up to 3%. Tell ‘em they’re dreamin. It may be as tight as a mans anus but the only thing a tight top reveals is how fat your fans are – and you can take that from someone who’s football team found that out the hard way a few seasons back. These days, when a coach talks about how someone’s ‘shown a lot of guts out there’, it’s more likely to be thanks to the tight jumper than his testicular fortitude.
Canterbury’s ‘idea’ is called ionisation and its technology derived from the Luftwaffe. That’s right, the bastards who bombed my mate Keith’s local fish and chip shop during the war. Ironic isn’t it that they couldn’t conquer Ol’ Blighty but years on their technology is helping to fleece thousands of Scotsmen out of NZ $160 for their national rugby jersey.
I’ll tell you what keeps a joker cool on the field and it ain’t his jersey. It’s the constant fear of stuffing it up in front of the thousands in the stands and the millions (if you’re one of the four big rugby playing countries) watching on the box. Fear sweat keeps you cool, not a painted on titty top. As for tight tops making it harder to tackle an opponent, well that gem of marketing bullshit lasted about as long as it took you to read it.
Incidentally the All Blacks ditched Canterbury a few years back for Adidas, a German firm that can trace its beginnings back to Nazi Germany and apparently, does alright for themselves these days. My mate Rosie won’t buy Adidas because he’s a man of principal. His Grandfather (and mine) fought the mighty Hun so that we wouldn’t have to forcibly wear their clothes – now our national team is sponsored by them and we pay to wear their lightweight leisure garments! If only dear old Adolf were around today to see that all his efforts weren’t in vain. Unfortunately he died in Argentina a few years back.
The same old corporate crap is rolled out at every football World Cup too – where it’s always marketed as Adidas vs Nike. Regardless of who wins on the pitch, both will sell shit loads of overpriced two ply sporting garments all of which were made in Cheapsville, China. They don’t play rugby in China and I’m not surprised. If you and your children spent all day making the stuff for 20c in the hand, you’re hardly likely to want to pull it on afterwards and crash tackle each other. Besides, you have to be up half an hour before you go to bed for work the next day anyway. So who has the time for rugby in China?
China really is the sphincter of the world isn’t it?! I mean okay fair play, the World was well on its way to an Al Gore documentary before China started cracking a turtle head above the full bowl that is the environment, but they’re a bit like a fella who doesn’t get his first pube till well into his teens, a late bloomer. Now they’re making up for lost time and hammering in the final nail on the Worlds coffin in their quest to westernise themselves.
All of this sportswear propaganda really works though because we buy house loads of the stuff. We actually believe that by wearing the stuff it will make us faster and stronger and of course most importantly, better looking why we do it. The reality is that it doesn’t now and it definitely didn’t back in the day when the world’s athletes had nothing more than a pair of stubbies and a wife beater to wear. It’s all a bit like an airline trying to tell you their planes are faster because of the extra smooth paint they use on them.
Take my word for it, the only thing that is going to make a Scotsman run a personal best at the rugby World Cup is a giant Polynesian chasing him down the sideline and not a $160 top!
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