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Peter Davies Oct's Plonker?

Cape Town - After much debate and head scratching, the Sport24 team have announced their Performers, Plonkers and Pictures of the month for October 2011.

Click HERE to cast your vote - and WIN!

Every month the Sport24 editorial team will announce nominations for a sportsperson or team (people who stole the limelight with a specific performance that month), a plonker (a team or person who has not covered themselves in glory) and a sports photo of the month (the one that makes you go "Ahhh"). You then get a chance to vote for the person, team and picture that best deserves the award...

So without further ado, then, the October nominations are...

PERFORMANCE:

Narrowing down the nominations for the October star of the month proved tricky with several candidates returning performances worthy of recognition.

CRAIG JOUBERT
The one traditional benefit (think Andre Watson!) of the Springboks failing to make World Cup finals is that it tends to open up vacancies for our referees to take charge of the showpiece ... and so it proved again at RWC 2011 with KwaZulu-Natal product Craig Joubert getting the honour for the New Zealand-France final at Eden Park. It came after he was praised for his control of the breakdown, especially, in the semi-final between the All Blacks and Wallabies.

HANK McGREGOR
The South African paddler earned glory for the country by winning the world marathon championship K1 canoeing title late in the month in Singapore harbour. He bossed the 35km race from start to finish, beating off quality Czech and Hungarian opponents into second and third spots, and became the first competitor to hold every single and double title in a calendar year.

RUSTY THERON & WAYNE PARNELL
Cometh the hour, cometh ... er, two men. The Proteas looked like surrendering the Twenty20 international series 2-0 to arch-rivals Australia at the Wanderers, when they slipped to 84 for seven in pursuit of 148 in the 15th over. But a whirlwind, unbeaten stand of 64 between Warriors team-mates Theron (30 not out off 16 balls) and Parnell (29 not out off 11 balls) carried them spectacularly over the line before a full house.

ELTON JANTJIES
Brilliant Absa Currie Cup campaign generally; brilliant Absa Currie Cup final. That was the story of Jantjies’s season as the diminutive flyhalf played a hugely influential role (including a personal points haul of 24) in the Golden Lions’ 42-16 roasting of the Sharks at Coca-Cola Park. He was the official man of the match and is now being spoken about in much more serious terms for regular Springbok honours up the line.

MORNE MORKEL

The beanpole Titans paceman, once not associated with great discipline in his bowling, underlined his personal blossoming over the past couple of years with a near career-best haul of 4/22 in the second ODI against Australia at Port Elizabeth – which also saw him catapult to the top of the ICC ODI rankings for bowlers for the first time.

PLONKERS:

And in the not so serious plonker category... Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the biggest plonker of them all?

ITUMELENG KHUNE
The Bafana goalkeeper thought he was being clever with some theatrical injury-feigning near the end of the goalless draw with less-than-mighty Sierra Leone in Nelspruit, mistakenly believing that the national side had done enough, as things stood, to clinch their participation in the African Nations Cup tournament next year. Instead (see “SAFA” below!) his dubious little act only turned out looking dreadfully foolish ... 

PETER DAVIES
Revisit the gory details HERE if you must, but an alleged bout of improper behaviour at a gym by the versatile SuperSport presenter only dragged the corporation’s name further through unwanted mud ... they have been jinxed in recent years by acts of out-of-studio impropriety by presenters or pundits.

SAFA
In time-honoured fashion, rather than carry the can for rank bungling the national soccer body opted to protest Bafana’s elimination from next year’s African Cup of Nations after they had wrongly assumed South Africa’s 0-0 outcome against Sierra Leone at Mbombela Stadium had been enough to ensure qualification on goal difference ... they had simply not read up beforehand on the actual criteria involved when three teams end on the same number of points. Kaizer Chiefs supremo Kaizer Motaung rightly said they were “on a wild goose chase”.

BLUE BULLS
Not too long ago still the much-envied powerhouse of South African rugby, the Bulls experienced ignominy by failing to reach even the Absa Currie Cup semi-finals for the first time in a decade: the killer blow was allowing Griquas to come from well behind to beat them 48-44 in Kimberley early in the month, which ultimately led to their being elbowed into a fifth-placed finish. Rubbing salt into their wounds, arch-rivals Western Province pipped them to fourth.

SARU
South African rugby fans first found out that Bulls fullback Zane Kirchner was a late call-up for World Cup duty (following in-form utility back Frans Steyn’s unfortunate injury) in a slightly unusual way ... the revelation came not by customary, more appropriate SARU media release but on the light-hearted SuperSport “Toks ‘n Tjops” programme. Somehow that didn’t seem worthy of the tournament’s great gravitas, did it?

PHOTOS:


In a bid to deservedly salute the photographers doing the hard graft on the sidelines. Sport24 have put together a gallery of the "Best of the Best" pictures of the month of October. They're guaranteed to leave you speechless. Click HERE to view our selection of the: Best of the best pictures

Reader voting

Readers monthly votes will decide the 12 finalists in each category, and it is from those 12 finalists that Sport24 will decide their Star, Plonker and Picture of the Year in December.
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