Things that you didn’t know, or had forgotten about Brendan Cannon
• He was the first player to sign up for the Emirates Western Force.
• He was once bitten by a dirty rotten cheating Springbok player
• He was awarded the Rugby Medal for Excellence in 2003
• He was in a near fatal car accident when he was 20.
Scars of a real-life gladiator
Scars of a real-life gladiator
By Christine Jackman
August 7, 2004
When the film Gladiator hit screens a few years ago, Brendan Cannon's mates immediately christened him "Maximus", so closely did they think the Wallabies hooker resembled its star Russell Crowe.
But the boys got it wrong. It is Crowe who resembles Cannon, not vice versa. And a pale imitation it is, too. Perhaps the actor should be nicknamed "Knuckles" - another of Cannon's monikers - in honour of the warrior he could only aspire to be.
Sure, when Maximus Decimus Crowe strode into his celluloid Colosseum, biceps oiled and bulging, it was to do battle on occasion with lions and tigers and bears.
Cannon need only confront Springboks and All Blacks. But there's no director to yell cut when they're about to run over the top of you - and one could mount a strong argument that Kees Meeuws, Keven Mealamu and Carl Hayman are scarier than your average jungle predator any day.
When Crowe throws a punch, he usually has a bevy of minders on hand to finish the task. When Cannon throws one - not that the The Weekend Australian is condoning violence on the paddock - the job's already done. Just ask Mealamu, who discovered as much after offering Cannon a complimentary face massage in Bledisloe I.
Russell, according to the scandal sheets, has been undergoing intensive daily training for at least six months to prepare for his role as a champion boxer in The Cinderella Man, and is rumoured to have employed a cigarette holder to help him toke between takes.
Cannon has been training for most of his life to earn the right to play for his country - and needed no specialist advice to employ one of the sweetest right crosses you'll ever see to end the Mealamu niggling. (Okay, can't a person condone just a little violence, when the All Blacks have been doing it all day, sir?)
For Rusty, acquiring a face full of cuts and bruises means enduring an arduous hour or so sitting in makeup. For Cannon, it takes 80 minutes - sometimes less - of football.
Assessing Cannon's battered countenance - a split eyelid here, a tagged temple there - at the end of a match has become as much a part of a night at the rugby as enduring some guitar-strumming bloke in a Drizabone grinding out Waltzing Matilda at the beginning.
But the greatest irony of the hooker's growing reputation as a battered warhorse is that he has received no significant injuries on the field. Fewer than 20 of the 80-90 stitches he estimates he's had in his face and scalp come from football, and five of those were acquired before his representative days, when he copped a boot in the head during schoolboy rugby.
A near-fatal car accident at 20, when his Ford Festiva was forced into the path of a semi-trailer, left him with about 50 stitches in a jagged wound from his forehead through his right eyelid, a fractured hip socket, a badly lacerated elbow and ruptured knee ligaments.
A further 20 stitches were added last May, when Cannon was allegedly glassed by a man in an up-market Sydney club. The incident is still under police investigation.
So if Cannon plays these days like he has nothing to lose, it's probably because he feels he hasn't.
"I think I learnt very early on, through the unfortunate experience with the car accident, to appreciate that life isn't forever," Cannon said.
"That's a lesson that's been invaluable to me."
Off-field, it translates to a relaxed and contented demeanour, reflected in the type of sleepy-eyed grin that Crowe has made famous on screen.
But after kick-off, a different Cannon emerges - the one who is no longer afraid of pain.
"Copping the main (scar) in my forehead from the car accident, that was a pretty upsetting experience," he said.
"You can't conceal it in any way, so I've gotten used to that. And I suppose after that, all the other ones just blend in to a degree.
"I've copped my fair share of nicks and cuts, but they haven't been serious wounds. Although I suppose over time they all add up."
Cannon laughs off any comparison with Crowe, or any suggestion he may be targeted because of his pretty boy looks.
"There's no comparison. Russell's got a pretty unblemished face," Cannon said.
"I just always seem to have my head in the wrong place.
"It's a bit of a magnet, unfortunately. The cosmic forces somehow attract everything to my head."
Particularly if it's in an All-Black jersey. Just ask Carlos Spencer, Meeuws and Justin Marshall, who descended on Cannon in a blur of black and white haymakers after his altercation with Mealamu.
Having walked away relatively unscathed from that ruckus, Cannon was sin-binned, only to receive one of the worst on-field injuries he's sustained when he returned.
An accidental boot in the eye left him with another torn eyelid and partially torn tear duct, requiring four stitches. "It's frustrating, having all the head-related cuts and abrasions, but it's just part and parcel of the game," Cannon said.
And while he enjoys the odd bit of media work he does - reducing ABC radio host and rugby tragic Sally Loane to regular fits of girlish giggles during their weekly chats throughout the 2003 World Cup - he's not grooming himself for a switch to screen any time soon.
"I don't have a skincare routine, just a bit of soap on your face in the shower, wash the dirt off, away you go," Cannon grinned.
"So I guess that ruins my chance of a cosmetics sponsor. But I am a good candidate for an extreme makeover. A great candidate."
As Rusty Crowe would say: Go, Brendan, go.
The Australian