Episode 35 - Surprise return for Proteas women, French Open, Player pay, 1 hit and quit, Fast 5!

Episode 37 - CSA: TICKETS! PSG vs Arsenal, Roids, Athletes that never won, Fast Five Fun Facts.

TOPIC 1 — NEWLANDS TICKET DEBACLE CSA sent a "Sold Out" email at 09:00 for tickets that went on sale at 09:30. The Barmy Army got 12%. South African fans got 13%. Resale tickets hit R4,465 before lunch. This is what happens when your national cricket board sells the New Year's Test to overseas tour packages before ordinary fans have finished their coffee — and there's still no Sky Sports broadcast deal to show for it. TOPIC 2 — FOOTBALL SEASON WRAP Orlando Pirates won a treble. Sundowns won the CAF Champions League. Arsenal won the Premier League. All the big leagues wrapped up — and now Arsenal face PSG in the Champions League final in Budapest on 30 May. Arsenal went unbeaten in Europe all season. PSG lost twice and still made it. One has won this before. The other has been waiting 22 years. And one of them is about to be very disappointed. TOPIC 3 — DOPING IN SA RUGBY Asenathi Ntlabakanye gets 18 months — his doctor refused to testify. Aphiwe Dyantyi got four years, won Breakthrough Player of the Year, came back and just won the French Pro D2. Chilliboy Ralepelle got eight years after two previous positives. Elton Jantjies got four years and is now coaching at a school in Johannesburg at 33. Meanwhile no All Black or England rugby player has ever been banned for performance-enhancing drugs. Not one. A former Georgian captain got 11 years for swapping samples. South African rugby has a problem it refuses to name properly. TOPIC 4 — TOP ATHLETES WHO NEVER WON Karl Malone. Jim Kelly — four straight Super Bowls, four losses, no ring. Jonah Lomu — changed rugby forever in 1994, lost to the Springboks in 1995, never lifted the Webb Ellis Cup. Cristiano Ronaldo — won in England, Spain, Italy and Saudi Arabia, five Ballons d'Or, a European Championship — and no World Cup. Merlene Ottey — seven Olympics, nine medals, zero gold. And an entire generation of South African cricket: Kallis, AB, Amla — individually brilliant, collectively never champions. Pete Sampras and Martina Navratilova never won Olympic singles gold. Sometimes the biggest prize is the one that gets away. FAST FIVE — QUESTIONS ONLYIvan Lendl represented two countries at the Olympics — name both.Brian O'Driscoll played 141 internationals for Ireland and the Lions. How many Rugby World Cups did he play in — and name the years.Which club has suffered the most losses in UEFA Champions League history — and what is their win percentage?

Ep. 36 - Hospitality prices, Too much Rugby, RSA IPL, Sporting Duos, FFFFs

TOPIC 1 — HOSPITALITY Watching sport used to cost the price of a ticket. Now it costs the price of a small car, a hotel in Sandton, and your children's university fund. Welcome to corporate hospitality. Watching the Springboks play the All Blacks will set you back R9,995. That's before you've had a drink. The Barmy Army flew to South Africa for three Tests — 23 nights, flights included — and paid up to R210,000 each. The All Blacks' full 31-day tour package hit 384,000 Rand. No flights. Sold out anyway. Meanwhile the ordinary fan is standing in a queue at Loftus in the rain wondering why his pie costs R85. TOPIC 2 — URC vs SUPER RUGBY The Bulls fly to Belfast on a Tuesday. The Stormers play Dublin on a Saturday. The Springboks play New Zealand in July. Nobody is sleeping. Welcome to the calendar from hell. The URC is more physical, more competitive and better for SA rugby. Also: the players are awake for eleven months of the year and the Currie Cup has lost 120 of its best players. Super Rugby had bad travel and worse results. The URC has great travel and great results — and a Champions Cup that nobody in South Africa can explain, a Challenge Cup that nobody watches, and a scheduling problem that SA Rugby is now desperately trying to solve before someone actually collapses. TOPIC 3 — IPL UPDATE Klaasen is third in the run charts. Rabada is second in wickets. Markram has no fifties. Jansen is struggling. And Quinton de Kock has played three innings and averaged 66. Cricket is chaos. Heinrich Klaasen is batting out of his skin — 555 runs, average 50, in the middle order. Rabada has 21 wickets. And then there is everyone else. Markram has no fifties. Jansen is really struggling. Ngidi got injured just when his slower ball was terrifying people. De Kock has played three times and averaged 66 — a statistical masterpiece of irrelevance. The surprise package is Donovan Ferreira, striking at 173 for Rajasthan like a man who heard there was a party and showed up early. Baby AB is watching from the dugout. Virat Kohli is 38 and averaging 54. South African cricket: it's complicated. TOPIC 4 — BEST SPORTS DUOS Shaq and Kobe couldn't be in the same room. Matfield and Bakkies barely needed to speak. Wasim and Waqar destroyed everything. Great duos are built on chemistry — or beautiful, productive dysfunction. Shaq and Kobe won three NBA titles and then imploded spectacularly — both going on to win separately, as if to prove the partnership was the problem and the brilliance was personal. Wasim and Waqar took 559 Test wickets together and scared a generation of batsmen into early retirement. Anderson and Broad took 1,039 — together, over a career so long their opponents' children had started playing cricket. Matfield and Bakkies played 62 Tests, won a World Cup, beat the Lions, and collected trophies like most people collect speeding fines. And Navratilova and Pam Shriver won 109 consecutive doubles matches — which in tennis terms is basically winning every Tuesday for three years. TOPIC 5 — FUN FAST FIVE FACTS Five questions. No help. No Googling. And if you say "I think it's..." you've already lost. Q1: How many times did Glenn McGrath dismiss Mike Atherton in Test cricket — and how many were ducks? Q2: Which Springbok front row trio holds the record for most Tests together — and how many times did they play as a unit? Q3: Which SA family produced a father, a son, and a coach — all three affecting South African cricket — and how? Q4: Which SA bowling partnership has taken the most Test wickets combined — and how many? Q5: The Bryan Brothers won 118 doubles titles together. Which Grand Slam did one of them win separately — with a completely different partner — after the brothers retired?

Episode 35 - Surprise return for Proteas women, French Open, Player pay, 1 hit and quit, Fast 5!

1) Surprise recall in the Proteas woman World Cup team. Balanced team , ready for World Cup. 2) Roland Garros, the clay, no Carlitos, can anyone stop Sinner? Is Iga back and can there be a new champion. 3) Sports pay, Premier League players earn huge relative to revenues, IPL players too, tennis players not so much. Mbappe earns 25 times Dupont!! 4) Who made 100 and a 50 in their only test match and then got chopped? Who scored 6 tries for the Boks on debut and then never scored a try again? 5) Fun fast five facts. Shabnim facts galore!

Episode 34 - Golden Oldies, u20 Championship, EPL, Sports Songs, Fun Fast Five

GOLDEN OLDIES Five people who refused to retire. Merlene Ottey competed at seven Olympics across 33 years, finishing for Slovenia at 52. Martina Navratilova won a Grand Slam title at 49 — a month shy of her 50th birthday. Venus Williams still making WTA main draws at 44. Ma'a Nonu still bulldozing defenders in the French Top 14 at 43. Imran Tahir still taking T20 wickets at 47 — at a better average than his career stats. U20 RUGBY CHAMPIONSHIP Back-to-back champions. Junior Springboks clinched the 2026 title with a round to spare — 56-17 against Australia in Gqeberha. Argentina helped by beating New Zealand in the same round. Nine-match winning streak going back to last year's World Championship in Italy. Key players: Yaqeen Ahmed, Jack Benade, Riley Norton. How many of this squad play for the senior Boks within five years? EPL RUN-IN Arsenal lead with three games left and have just reached the Champions League final in Budapest on 30 May. Bukayo Saka beat Atletico Madrid 2-1 on aggregate. They haven't won the league in 22 years. They've never won the Champions League. Both are now on the table simultaneously. City dropped points at Everton when it mattered most. Remaining: West Ham, Burnley, Crystal Palace. SPORTS SONGS Sister Bethina. A young man called Mgarimbe jumped on a microphone at Action Bar in downtown Johannesburg at two in the morning, wasted, and sang over a beat his friend had made on a laptop. The next morning he begged his friend to delete it. He didn't. A few weeks later Mgarimbe was sitting in his Hillbrow flat and heard a taxi drive past playing his song. That song is now played after the national anthem at every Springbok home test. South Africa's unofficial second national anthem. FUN FAST FIVE FACTS

Episode 33 - Proteas sweep aside India, School rugby out of control, URC hotting up, Famous celebs who played sport, Fun fast 5 facts

🏏 Topic 1 — Proteas Women vs India (4-1)Full match-by-match results table across all five T20Is at Kingsmead, Wanderers and Willowmoore Park. Wolvaardt's historic 115 off 47 balls in Match 3 gets its own section — the fastest SA women's T20I century, her 17th international hundred, level with Meg Lanning and Smriti Mandhana. India's perspective including Deepti Sharma's career-best 5/19 in the dead-rubber match. And the World Cup context — both teams are in the same group in England in June. 🏉 Topic 2 — Is School Rugby Too Serious? SA Rugby's new 2026 tackle laws are the anchor. Then a structured debate — arguments for and against — covering weight mismatches, the concussion crisis, the professionalisation problem, and the pipeline argument. Paul Roos coach Corné Uys's own words: "they are still only boys." Ends with three discussion prompts for Sasha and Luyanda to put to each other. 🌍 Topic 3 — URC Final Two LapsFull 16-team standings table after Round 16, colour-coded (Sharks in red, top-8 in green). SA's four stories: Stormers top with home QF secured, Lions in third fighting to stay there, Bulls seventh clinging on, Sharks eliminated. Round 17 fixtures table. The Lions' first-ever SA Shield win gets its own mention. Topic 4 - Famous celebs who played sports. 🎾 Kaley Cuoco — Regionally-ranked junior tennis player before The Big Bang Theory. Later married a pro tennis player. Penny could have gone pro. 🎾 Matthew Perry — Nationally ranked junior in Canada. Trained 10 hours a day. Moved to LA at 15. His words: "Everyone in LA just killed me. I was pretty great in Canada." Gave up tennis. Became Chandler Bing. 🤿 Jason Statham — Part of Britain's National Diving Squad. Represented England at the 1990 Commonwealth Games, 10m platform. Grew up alongside Vinnie Jones (professional footballer turned actor). Both ended up in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Two athletes, one film. ⚽ Gordon Ramsay — Scouted by Rangers FC at 15. Knee injury ended it. Became one of the most Michelin-starred chefs in history. Still famous for screaming — which is more or less what he'd have been doing at Ibrox anyway. 🏈 Dwayne Johnson — Defensive tackle at the University of Miami. Part of the 1991 national championship team. Went undrafted. Became the greatest WWE star of his era. Then one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors. Three careers. All successful. Still doesn't skip leg day. Topic 5 - Fun Fast 5 Facts.