• Rugby Heaven: Henry looking to find top Gear
• Radio Australia: All Blacks choose top Gear for Hong Kong game

UPDATED...

• NZ Herald: Hosea has to stay in favoured top gear
• Dominion Post: Stepping up a gear
• NZPA: Hosea gears up for his big chance

This is what happens when you fuck with the Pujols!

(click for larger version) 

The young man with the Jackson Pollock-trousers is San Diego Padres  pitcher Chris Young who was hit with a drive from Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols (pronounced Poo-holes).

Pujols lined a ball up the middle that struck Padres pitcher Chris
Young in the face, sending Young immediately to the ground and knocking
the right-hander out of the game. Young was diagnosed with a broken and
lacerated nose, which is surely an awful thing to sustain but frankly
something of a relief. The Cardinals saw teammate Juan Encarnacion take
major damage to his eye on a foul ball last year.

 But Pujols wasn't finished yet:

Two batters later, with Pujols standing on second base, Troy Glaus
singled to right field. Pujols came around trying to score, and with
Josh Bard blocking the plate, Pujols slid directly into Bard's foot.
Bard suffered a sprained ankle and was removed from the game. It was a
clean play, but nonetheless unpleasant. The Padres said Bard will go on
the disabled list.

Is there no end to the damage Pujols can cause? Hee hee hee, Pujols.

As you may know, the Dropkicks have a (hypocritical) hatred of poor puns in the media. Which is why I grimaced when I saw:

Thunderbirds were go against Steel

The reason for the grimace being that this is the fourth round of the ANZ Championship and we've had the following headlines for the Thunderbirds:

• Thunderbirds are go at home (a lead in to this weekend)
• Thunderbirds go as Fever fail to rise (a double entendre, so to speak, from Week 3)
• And yes, we used it too.

There were more on both TV and other media agencies but I couldn't be bothered looking.

Just quietly the Thunderbirds are 3-1 and have put away the Vixens and the Steel (losing to the Magic though).

New Zealand surfing's rising star Paige Hareb just demolished the competition (including two top-10 surfers) at the $US168,000 Drug Aware Pro. This means that the 17 year old is the first New Zealand woman to win a World Qualifying Series event.

So what kind of headline would you give to such an awesome event? Why not an awful pun:

'Ram-Paige' as Hareb shocks world's best surfers [Stuff, who else?]

At least they didn't say something like "riding a wave of success", oh wait...

After Bulldogs head coach Steve Folkes resigned it was a race against time for the major news agencies to publish their stories under the predictable headline:

• That's all Folkes [Stuff]
• That's all Folkes [NZ Herald]
• That's all Folkes [TVNZ]
• That's all Folkes [Herald Sun]
• That's all Folkes [Daily Telegraph]
• That's all Folkes [Sydney Morning Herald] (scroll down a little)

In our early days, back when it was still the Super 12, the Dropkicks did a wee thing called “Pun Watch”. We would scour the weekly sports news for the worst puns we could find (usually about Rico Gear) and ask each other what we thought the article was on. We got rid of pun watch early on as the puns became repetitive (the Crusaders can only “hit Top Gear” so many times).

But this year the sports journos of our fair country have been up late at night, fervently thumbing their thesaurus, to bring you some real humdingers.

• Stanley knifes into the Blues midfield [Stuff]

• Cricket's 'easy Ryder' still a little rough [Stuff]
• Blues ponder where to apply their Ice [Stuff]
• The magnificent NZ sevens [Herald]