It started off as a tribute to Johnny O’Connor and before long it snowballed into a selection of the best bald rugby players of the past and present. Presenting Jerry Flannery’s bald rugby players XV.
Whether it’s because of the sheer amount of testosterone they use up on the pitch, whether it’s the amount of head-on collisions or whether it’s simply the case that rugby players are more folically-challenged than the rest of us, plenty of those who have chased an egg over the years have ended up with heads that look like one either during or after their playing career.
One of those affected players, friend of the site Johnny O’Connor, hung up his boots yesterday and amongst the many tributes that came his way was one from former Connacht and Ireland teammate Jerry Flannery, who said the following of the Galway native.
Having paid tribute to Johnny, Jerry was eager to continue the bald theme and, with the help of his followers, set about selecting an entire bald rugby team made up of eggheads from past and present.
While his eventual team would be pretty scary to look at it, they’d take some beating as well.
Jerry Flannery’s Bald Rugby Players XV: Girvan Dempsey; Denis Hickie, Mike Tindall, Felipe Contepomi, Jonah Lomu; Paul Burke, Peter Stringer; Soane Tonga’uiha, Keith Wood, John Hayes; Nathan Sharpe, Paul O’Connell; Lawrence Dallaglio, Johnny O’Connor, Sergio Parisse.
Is there anyone Jerry overlooked that was unlucky not to make it? Feel free to let us know in the comments box below.
The likes of Flannery himself and Dimitri Szarzewski were two of the lucky ones who avoided the curse of the bald rugby player but there was a time when Jerry sailed close to the wind in terms of baldness himself, or at least looked like a member of a skinhead gang, a look we’re not expecting to see on him again anytime in the near future.
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