The Online Guy

The return of Super Rugby has finally wiped that vacant stare off the faces of the rugby fanatics in the Sports Illustrated HQ – and Online Guy Gareth Rosslee is smiling.

Despite our being a multi-sport magazine there are big variables when it comes to knowledge or love for sports like tennis, Formula 1, golf and even cricket. There is, however, one sport on which we unanimously agree – rugby is the dog’s bollocks!

Friday mornings there’s a jockeying for position around the office LCD and there’s an art to leaping off your chair to respond to emails, field telephone calls and generally look busy while keeping up to speed with the Friday morning games. One of the perks of working for a sports mag is that we can pause the real ‘work’ to take in live sport on TV, but just because we don’t have to sneak some online live scoring past IT or duck to the toilet to get score updates via Twitter doesn’t mean that there isn’t work to be done – especially when we’re on deadline!

It’s also interesting to see a team that gets along well adopt a Machiavellian attitude to each other as Fantasy League, office predictions, bets and straight out team support worm their way into every cheer or groan that escapes from anguished lungs. It’s incredible how these fringe aspects can increase the drama of an 80-minute match. If you think you’ve seen some heated arguments around a braai, try putting a team of experts around a TV and seeing the contrasting opinions getting thrashed out. There’s not even a beer in sight! It’s all great fun though and we’re all glad that the super-long Super Rugby season is finally here. Game on.

It’s all Fantasy Rugby, New Model Search, Super Rugby and Top 10 lists of all sorts on www.sportsillustrated.co.za this month, so head over there and get involved.

Daily Babes: We’re pulling out all the stops for the duration of the New Model Search, with daily stunners being awarded the NMS Girl Of The Day badge. We’re putting up the winners on the site, on Facebook and on Twitter, so there’s no excuse for you to be missing out.