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Thread: Nick Cummins wanting animal magic

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    Immortal Contributor The InnFORCEr's Avatar
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    Nick Cummins wanting animal magic

    In a bid to find out a little more about Australia’s match-winning hero at Twickenham, it felt necessary to ask Nick Cummins what were the essential facts all England needed to know.


    By Ian Chadband

    10:30PM GMT 18 Nov 2012


    “Well, mate,” he mused. “The honey badger travels 40 kilometres a day and is one of the most fearless and fiercest animals in the world. So that’s something for me to aspire to.”


    In the course of a short but memorable post-match interview, for it is not every day that you converse with an international sportsman who volunteers how he wants to be a honey badger, it was clear that Australia have unearthed not just another dazzling back but also a rare old character.


    Cummins comes over as a bit of a barmy beaut, on and off the field. His Twitter biography reads simply “Never corner a honey badger” and he seems to approach his rugby life in the same ferociously physical way as his beloved African carnivore, a creature supposedly so vicious, not to say barkingly daft, that it will rip open a bees’ nest while being quite prepared to be stung to death for its pains.


    Devouring Animal Planet on TV one day, it transpired, Cummins learned awestruck how the honey badger once killed a lion in a one-on-one fight.


    “He clawed the canastas off the big fella. The big one-two. To me, that is outstanding,” as he told Australian journalists before his Test debut against Argentina last month. The wild thing had found his role model.


    Three years ago, Cummins feared his career might be over because of a foot injury. What inspired his recuperation? Have a guess. “That back to the wall attitude of that little honey badger who goes ‘hang on, hang on, we’re not going to back down here’.”

    On Saturday, poor old Charlie Sharples played the part of pulverised lion as Cummins, with curly locks flowing, ploughed his 6ft 2in, 15st 2lb frame through and over his England counterpart.

    Later in the first half, the Western Force winger galloped over for the crucial try, his first at Test level before he demonstrated real ferocity in defence after the break.

    The striking sight and striking performance was topped only by his striking try description. “I just saw the line, pinned me ears back and ended bagging a bit of meat in the corner there, which was tops!” The bit of meat? Presumably meat pie, the Aussie rhyming slang for ‘try’.

    He sounded as if he had stepped straight off the set of Crocodile Dundee.

    “How bloody good, eh? Bloody eighty-one thousand three hundred and sixty one out there. Mate, I need a bloody eardrum replacement after that! Everyone singing and carrying on. Yeah, really enjoyed it.”

    Not bad for a bloke who reckoned he had only won a place on the tour because the Wallabies had been injury-hit. Or as he puts it: “Luckily for me every bugger fell over and I got a gig, so I’m stoked.”

    How the beleaguered coach Robbie Deans needed his men offering 22 honey badger impressions here.

    Cummins made it sound as if the inspired collection of novices or understudies like him, outstanding flanker Michael Hooper and scrum-half Nick Phipps, described only last week by one critic as “maybe the worst No 9 in Australia’s rugby history”, were determined to claw the detractors away from their boss’s throat.

    “Big Robbie? He’s been killing it. Dominating,” Cummins said. “The way he’s held the boys together and changed our mindset for this game is commendable. He’ll always say ‘aw, it wasn’t me, it was the boys’ but that’s just the bloke he is.”

    Deans was not bothered about the release of pressure on himself. “I’m more pleased for my family — because they probably suffer more than I do,” said the New Zealander. Did he think he would be back here in 2015 to lead the Wallabies’ World Cup assault?

    “I’m not a gambling man — that’s someone else’s decision but I’d love to be because I think we’ve got the makings of a very good group here.”

    And would Cummins be here, still piling into bees’ nests in 2015? “If you wanna make God laugh, you tell him your plans,” said the honey badger. “Have you not heard that phrase? It’s a bloody winner ”


    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rug...mal-magic.html

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    Veteran Sheikh's Avatar
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    Reprising the article for Cummins' anniversary, TIF?

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    Don't tell me the sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon

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    Immortal Contributor The InnFORCEr's Avatar
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    Was looking for a post match interview after Ireland and found this.

    Plus we don't want you Poms to forget the loss that quickly.........Oh, that's right you're an Aussie

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    Immortal jargan83's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by The InnFORCEr View Post
    .Plus we don't want you Poms to forget the loss that quickly
    You're only as good as your last game.....oh wait

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