Fifty Shades of May is back!
Like bubonic plague, The King’s Evil, Water Elf Disease or some other foul medieval ailment which the world thought had disappeared, Fifty Shades has lain dormant, metamorphosed and returned to infest this worthy website, and the world at large.
A cure was found for Smallpox and Scrofula, so perhaps an antidote to Fifty Shades will be discovered.
But until that happens, Fifty Shades is up and doing.
Rewind and you might recall Fifty Shades was introduced with the specific purpose of giving some gravitas and authority to a website populated by young whipper-snappers, lollygaggers, ne’er-do-wells and all-round smart-arses.
And that intention is still there. Here is where you will find the sound, sober, mature viewpoint.
Here abides seasoned, informed comment, produced with the aid of experience and knowledge as counterpoint to the caterwauling jackanapes of the younger contributors to the site.
So with that in mind, let’s talk about beards.
Never mind Wales’ defeat of England (as good a reason Fifty shades can think of for rebuilding Offa’s Dyke to a height of 10metres and topping it off with razor wire, or planting mines in the Bristol Channel), or Japan’s shock win over South Africa, the burning issue of the Rugby World Cup is facial fuzz.
Fifty Shades is less concerned with who will win the William Webb Ellis Trophy, but which team will lift the lesser-known, but equally important Rip Van Winkle Trophy, awarded to the team with the best collection of beards.
As somebody who has spent a large part of the summer trying to cultivate a hipster beard that would be able to take its rightful place in the hipsters’ HQ of Shorditch, it irks Fifty Shades that all he has been able to produce is something strangely white and whispy, like an albino’s pubes, or the sort of beard that should adorn Santa on Christmas Eve, but has been kept in a box in the loft and chewed by mice.
Rugby, of course, is a sport choc-full of testosterone, and that’s shown by the beards on display.
It is a little-known rule of the RWC that each team must have at least one member capable of producing enough facial hair to stuff a mattress, but some squads have gone the extra yard and selected guys who have enough fluff to upholster a full three-piece suite.
The USA also have a good collection of hairy bears, and are led by Danny Barrett who resembles somebody who survived the Donner Party but thought he didn’t look haggard enough after being stranded in the snowy Sierra Nevada all winter, so took himself off into the back country for a couple of months.
Wales’ only real contender is Jake Ball, but he does look like a mouse peering out of a bear’s backside.
Similarly, Josh Strauss, carries Scotland’s cause in the hirsute handicap. His beard resembles a decision to wear a sporran on his face. There’s more hair on his face than was collectively on show in Braveheart when the Scots bared their bums at the English.
The island nation of Tonga is a small speck in the pelagic vastness of the Pacific ocean. But they produce men with mighty beards in Uili Kolo’ofa’i and Vungakoto Lilo who allow birds and small mammals to nest in their facial fur when not packing down in the scrum.
For Georgia, the trio of Viktor Kolelishvili, Simon Maisurdze and Devit Zirakashvili have done their nation proud, all proud possessors of beards which look as though they have been drawn on with a thick wax crayon by a five-year-old told to draw a beard on a picture.
The host nation have put on a pretty shabby show, with only Joe Marler displaying the sort of beard that would draw admiring glances from sheep-shearers or hedge-trimmers.
Pride of place, though goes to Canada whose sheer volume of facial fluff makes them firm favourites for the Rip van Winkle Trophy.
DFS have already shown an interest for upholstery for their new range of super-soft sofas should the Canucks ever rediscover the only razor that was shipped into their country by the Hudson Bay Company in 1789.
Prop Hubert Buydens hair-beard combo brings to mind an explosion in a mattress factory, while Evan Olmstead makes Bigfoot look like Gollum.
Big ups, though, to Ray Barkwill whose absence of hair on his dome is compensated for by the volume on his face, making him look for all the world like a man with his head on upside-down.
Of course, the Beard Liberation Front ( a real organisation!) are all over the RWC like a cheap suit, and are running an on-line poll.
Spokesman Keith Flett said: “We’re expecting competition to bristle for the Rugby World Cup. Once we’ve had time to assess which beards make it on to the field and the impact they have, we’ll let the public have their say.”
Fifty Shades will have something to say when we are comparing beards at the womens’ rugby world cup.
