The Luke Alfred Show

United Rugby Championship: Season 3 - The Drama Heats Up! Forget Netflix, this is real-life drama unfolding! The United Rugby Championship's final stretch is packed with nail-biting contests as South African teams fight for a place in the playoffs. The Fallen Champions: The Stormers, victors of Season 1, haven't quite repeated their dominance. They're a powerful team at home, racking up points and tries at Loftus Versfeld. However, their away record is patchy, with losses to Edinburgh and Leinster The Resurgent Lions: These underdogs are the surprise of the season. Despite a shaky start with narrow defeats, they've found their rhythm, becoming the current "bonus-point kings." Their next four matches are all at home, a huge advantage. The Stormers' Struggle: They started strong but have become frustratingly inconsistent. Their high-risk, high-reward style can backfire, leading to losses and a dip in confidence. Key injuries haven't helped either. Coach John Dobson faces a tough decision: stick to his attacking philosophy or prioritize pragmatism? The Race for the Top Spots: With just four rounds left, a whopping 11 teams are fighting for only eight playoff spots! The top four secure home advantage, making the battle even fiercer. More than Just Rugby: The URC season unfolds against a backdrop of significant changes in South African rugby's financial landscape. Private equity is a major player now, with SA Rugby's deal with the Ackerley Investment Group nearing completion. Looking Beyond the URC: The future of domestic competitions like the SA Cup and Currie Cup remains uncertain. Lopsided results and player availability issues cast shadows on their relevance. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

In this episode, I take us on a trip down memory lane, exploring my life as a South African boy, with a love for cricket, during the 1970s and early 1980s. We delve into the joy of playing barefoot on the Wanderers outfield, the thrill of watching heroes like Graeme Pollock and Kevin McKenzie in action, and the camaraderie of lunchtime games on the Wanderers outfield. I'll tell you about Ajax Amsterdam, and their iconic thick red stripe and exotic European allure. It explores the imaginative world created through pencil drawings of their legendary players. Back in South Africa, the focus returns to Wanderers cricket, with vivid descriptions of favourite cricketers and their nicknames - "Spook" Hanley, "Dassie" Biggs, and "Yogi" Ferreira. We learn about the bowling styles of Vince van der Bijl and Clive Rice, accompanied by the iconic commentary of Charles Fortune. Fortune's voice is painted as a cultural touchstone, shaping the way a generation of white South Africans perceived and experienced cricket.exclamation His commentary is described as both comforting and ultimately limited, reflecting a world in isolation. The episode is a bittersweet reflection on nostalgia, acknowledging the lost world of yesteryear while embracing the progress of the present. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

Step back in time with me, Luke Alfred, as we trace the footsteps of relentless women who dared to disrupt the Boston Marathon's status quo. Discover how Bobbi Gibb and Kathrine Switzer's audacious strides ignited a revolution in women's sports, transforming a mere footrace into a symbol of gender equality. Gibb’s surreptitious dash from the bushes in '66, clad in men's clothing, and Switzer's groundbreaking, yet contentious, run a year later, marked by an infamous altercation with race official Jock Semple, were not mere acts of defiance but pivotal events that reshaped the sporting world. Witness the emancipation narrative that ensues, echoing the indomitable spirit of Patriots' Day and connecting the marathon's revolutionary past with its egalitarian present. Beyond the struggles and triumphs of these legendary women, we cast a spotlight on the mysterious JJ McDermott, the marathon's first victor whose life story is as elusive as it is fascinating. Plagued by rumors of racing with tuberculosis, McDermott's legacy is a blend of athletic prowess and enigma, with his death and final resting place remaining topics of speculation. Join me in celebrating these captivating tales from the Boston Marathon that not only exemplify the unyielding pursuit of equality but also serve as a testament to the human spirit's capacity for endurance and resilience. This is more than just a race; it's a narrative of heroes and history-makers that continue to inspire every runner that takes to the starting line. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

This week we delve into the rich history and legendary moments of the Grand National steeplechase, and the remarkable victory of the horse Foinavon in 1967. From the historical significance of the race to the unexpected twists and turns, join us as we uncover the unforgettable story behind one of horseracing's most iconic moments. Episode Highlights: The Grand National: A Cultural Phenomenon:Red Rum: A Tale of Triumph and Resilience:The Unlikely Hero Foinavon's Historic Triumph:The Foinavon Fence, A Testament to Triumph:Reflections on Courage and Determination:Join me as we journey through the annals of horse-racing history and celebrate the enduring spirit of champions like Foinavon, whose triumphs transcend the boundaries of time and inspire us to reach for greatness. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

The 2019/20 Champions League season was a rollercoaster ride marked by unprecedented challenges, overshadowed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite its surreal nature, being played in front of no fans, and swift conclusion, this season left an indelible mark on football history. Episode Highlights: The Pandemic's Grip on Football:Bayern Munich's Dominance:The Rise of Lewandowski and Haaland:The Forgettable Final:Looking Ahead:Relive the unforgettable moments and untold stories of the 2019/20 Champions League season by tuning in to The Luke Alfred Show. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

One of the spinoffs of the Springboks winning the Rugby World Cup in 2023, is that club rugby in the country is booming. Quietly, without fuss, and without much wider public or media attention, the numbers are climbing. They have done so for the last four or five months. And it’s good that they’re doing so now, because we stand poised on the cusp of club rugby season. South African club rugby has a protean durability at the best of times, this is true. Estimates suggest, for example, that the country possesses 150 000 players at approximately 1500 clubs scattered across the land, making the South African club system second largest in the world behind France. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

Who of us hasn’t driven past a cricket match glimpsed momentarily through a hedge, unable for some good reason to stop? Who of us hasn’t caught a train, the inter-city 9:15 to somewhere, and seen cricket thin-sliced through a speeding carriage window? Circumstances and countries might differ, but this is the cricket match we cannot, for whatever reason, stop for. It is the match that goes on without us and, because of this, it makes us momentarily sad. Were we to somehow stop the car we were in, or get out at the next station and find the match, we would soon be sucked into what we were watching. Cricket is, in this sense, magnetic. It draws you hither. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

Gary Neville also objected. He knew that Power wasn’t part of the United starting X1 and told Power so. Power told Neville that he was doing this all for Eric Cantona and Gary was to shut up, which seemed to buy him the time he needed to sneak into the photograph. Neville surely didn’t buy Power’s explanation, although he might have been confused in ways he couldn’t quite put a finger on. Power, you see, has a passing resemblance to Cantona and was wearing Cantona’s famous number 7 shirt. Power might almost have passed for “King Eric” except that Cantona hadn’t played for United for going on for four years by the time of the Bayern quarter-final. Perhaps, like Cole, Neville reasoned that this would all become irrelevant because whomever this Cantona lookalike was, he and his baggy shorts would soon be on his way, walking off the pitch and out of history. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

It emerged on day four that the ball-tampering plan had been hatched by senior players in the dressing room at lunchtime on the third day. Smith lost the captaincy and Warner the vice-captaincy, both banned by the ICC for one Test. In Australia, the shame and anger were widespread. Even the Aussie prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, felt compelled to comment. The tour ploughed headlong into the ground. As an afterthought, there was some cricket. Morné Morkel, who had missed the second Test, took five second-innings Australian wickets as they were bowled out for 107, losing the Test by 322 runs, so the Proteas went 2–1 up in the series after consecutive wins in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. There was something of the public flogging to all this, particularly when Smith – who, subsequent to his ICC banning, was banned for a year by the Australian Cricket Board – broke down in tears at Sydney airport as he, Warner and Bancroft were sent home. Here was an inarticulate young man, full of everyday frailties, trying to make sense of where it had all gone wrong. Watching Smith’s collapse was not pleasant. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial in admitting that, like a good friend from university, Bafana Bafana and I have lost touch over the last 10 or 12 years. It hasn’t been an active thing on my part. I haven’t turned my back on Bafana, at least I don’t think I have. Rather, it’s been a passive withdrawal into other things. Keeping in touch requires effort. When occasionally we did get together, I realised we were running out of things to say. The failure to take a goal when it presented itself did become a conversational sticking point, I’ll admit. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

There was something darkly comic about World Cup winning Springbok James Small, losing his life in a strip joint. Some of us might have lost other things – our virginity, our wallets, our self-respect, we might even have lost our mates, or our marriage in a strip joint – but Small wasn’t a small gestures kind of guy. He was all in. And there he was, at The Harem strip club in Bedfordview, a Johannesburg suburb, having his ticker call time on a life he seemed to lose long before he dropped dead. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

In the year between February 2023 and February 2024, for instance, six South African teams either won or reached World Cup finals, reached World Cup or continental semi-finals or hustled out of the group stages of World Cups to make the round of 16. In order of success, the teams are as follows: the Springboks, who won the Rugby World Cupfinal against arch-foes New Zealand in October, winning the final 12-11 in Paris. Six months before that our women cricketers reached the final of the T20 World Cup at Newlands, beating England in the semi-finals before losing to Meg Lanning’s Australia. Of the semi-finalists, there were three. The Proteas, after winning seven or their nine matches, including wins over England, New Zealand, Pakistan and Australia, in the round-robin phase of the men’s World Cup in India in October, lost to eventual winners, Australia in the semi-final. The SA under-19 men, reached the semi-finals of the under-19 World Cup on home turf, losing a close match against India at Willowmoore Park by two wickets. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

City have been accused by the Premier League of 115 violations of Financial Fair Play regulations dating back 14 years. In the interests of time and brevity we can’t detail all 115 breaches here, but they can all be collapsed into the idea City have failed to provide the Premier League with information that “gives a true and fair view of their financial position”. In addition to these allegations, the Premier League have also accused City of not co-operating fully with their investigation, which began in 2018. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

The 1960/61 West Indies tour of Australia was one of the greatest test series ever played. On the eve of the first Test in Brisbane, Don Bradman, the chairman of the Australian board but really everything cricket in Australia, asked Richie Benaud, the home skipper, if he could have a few words with his side. Benaud was not one to disagree with a presence as sharp and ubiquitous as “Braddles”, and stood back to watch. Bradman said that he saw the series against Worrell’s men as an opportunity for the home side – and cricket generally – to distance itself from some of the stodgy stuff played in previous series. He hoped Benaud and his men, with the coming young stroke-maker, Norm O’Neill in their midst, would lead the way. This is the story of the first ever tied test in the history of the game, at the Gabba, 1960. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

In a comforting way, Ange Postecoglou is just the boy next-door. Pep left home early; Wenger is too haughtily academic, even in his relaxed moments. José’s been defeated by his grumpiness; Thomas Tuchel is fascinating but finally disqualified from boy-next-door status by a vague air of the nerd. Gareth Southgate is the boy-next-door that sort of wants to be one of the boys, so is confusing. Only Jurgen Klopp cuts the mustard here. Maybe it will be the boys-next-door that will be wrestling for the league in a couple of month’s time? Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

The past, they say, is another country. South Africa in 1970 really was another country, a pre-democratic country lost in the mighty bluster of High Apartheid. It was so much another country that it was in another century, which makes the 1970 series against Australia look a little like a museum piece today. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

Dean Elgar is a legend of South African cricket, and a regularly underrated opening batsman. This is the inside story of his rise to the pinnacle of the game, from humble beginnings in rural South Africa. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

There was once a kerfuffle about whether to name a grandstand at Newlands after Kallis. In their infinite wisdom the Western Province Cricket Association board decided not to, which is a little like failing to name a spacesuit after Neil Armstrong, or an auditorium after Louie. The cricket-loving public of the Western Cape have long since got used to such japes by the Western Province board. They just shrug their shoulders and walk away. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

Handré Pollard was built for World Cups. By the time he was 21, he’d already starred in 3 Junior World Cups for the Baby Boks. 5 years later, he scored 22 points in the World Cup final, as the Springboks romped to a third World Cup victory. 4 years after that, he wasn’t in the original squad to defend South Africa’s title in France due to calf injury, but joined the team at later in the tournament in dramatic circumstances. Pollard’s kicking in the final was nothing short of a masterclass, as the Springboks won the World Cup yet again. From ordinary beginnings in small town South Africa, to the biggest stage in rugby, this is the untold story of the best kicker in the world. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.

Of 189 riders who started the Tour de France in 1998, only 96 finished the race at the Champs-Élysées. It was dubbed the so-called "Festina Affair", after the disqualified Festina team. Cycling has a long history of doping, deceit, and flagrant cheating. 1999 marked the beginning of Armstrong's web of lies, bullying, and ruthless control over the Tour de France. Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon. Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation. Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack. Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.