Former Sunday Times sportswriter Norman Canale, who died this week a month short of his 95th birthday, was larger than life with a flamboyant style that matched his courage for writing the hard-hitting truth.
As a result he was threatened, beaten up and banned from rugby stadiums and boxing tournaments along the way.
Canale matriculated at Muir College in Uitenhage, studied at Rhodes and Stellenbosch universities, did a stint in the army during World War 2 and tried his hand as a farm worker, a lifesaver and selling insurance (he never sold a policy).
His first newspaper job was at the Eastern Province Herald in Port Elizabeth. He earned the ire of his editor when, sent to cover club rugby, he played rather than reported.Canale went on to become a stand-out among a generation of gifted writers who included Ray Williams, Barry Glasspool, Chris Greyvenstein and Paul Irwin, whose Fleet Street approach was a contrast to the often "ungrammatical purity" of American Damon Runyon preferred by Canale.
CAROUSING WITH TENNIS STARS
He womanised and drank with the best of them and was banned a few times from the Federal Hotel, the favourite watering hole for newspapermen, radio personalities and actors in Johannesburg.
Canale also rubbed shoulders with sports stars. Publisher Don Nelson recalled a late-night drinking session with top international tennis players, including Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad, where they played a game of tossing beer cans. Rod Laver - rated the greatest tennis player of all time by Canale - had gone to bed early.
But Canale worked as hard as he partied and he never backed down in a conflict.
While covering the 1956 Springbok rugby trials in Cape Town, Canale had got wind that Bok captain-elect Salty du Rand, a lock, was upset with him for a story he'd written, and was told: "Salty says he feels like knocking the s**t out of you."
LOST BOK CAPTAINCY
Canale went up to Du Rand and told him: "I believe you threatened to f**k me up. Well, here I am. Go ahead."
Canale noted years later in his autobiography, Snakes in the Garden of Eden, that Du Rand asked him to pull up a chair and offered him a beer instead.
But Canale ended Du Rand's captaincy ambition just days later when he reported that the forward had punched fellow lock Jan Pickard during a late-night argument. Canale was up late drinking with team officials when Pickard stumbled in, his nose bent and bleeding. Canale was there when, moments later, Du Rand, the cause of the bleeding, rushed in at Pickard, who refused to fight back.
Canale got between them, and Du Rand shouted at Pickard, pointing to Canale: "You haven't half the guts of this man!"The incident happened midweek and Canale, then working for the Sunday Express, did not expect the story to survive to the weekend, but it did. His colleagues from competing publications gave in to the pleas of South African rugby boss Dr Danie Craven to keep the story under wraps.
Canale was the only one to refuse.
As a result the captaincy went to fullback Basie Vivier, who was then past his best and probably shouldn't have even been selected for the team that went to New Zealand.
Former colleague Kerry Swift recalled how Canale left newspapers for a stint in movie promotions. When he was lured back to the Sunday Times in the early 1970s, the legendary editor Joel Mervis trumpeted his return on street posters: "Canale is back!"
BARRED FROM BIG FIGHT
He was banned from the Ellis Park rugby ground at one stage, he was beaten up after a boxing fight because of what he'd written, and his life was threatened in the '70s when he championed the cause of black rugby players and called for mixed trials.
He was prevented from covering the Pierre Fourie vs Bob Foster world light-heavyweight title bout in 1973 by promoter Maurice Toweel for supposedly bad-mouthing Fourie and allegedly facilitating backhanders, a charge Swift says was unfounded.
Canale's report in the Sunday Times on Arnold Taylor's dramatic victory over Mexican Romeo Anaya for the WBA bantamweight crown in November 1973 was typical of his graphic descriptive style, starting out: "My hands are trembling. My stomach is in a knot. In a knock-em-down and drag-em-out brawl, Arnie Taylor turned back the clock 23 years at the Rand Stadium, Johannesburg, last night when he became the first South African since Viccie Toweel to win the bantamweight boxing championship of the world."
Canale, who described that 14-round bout as the greatest fight he'd ever covered, jumped up and down so many times that he said he felt like he'd run the Comrades.
"He made you live the event again," recalled longtime friend Stan Christodoulou, ring official and former boxing administrator. "Norman was very professional and I had a lot of respect for him."He knew the game and he projected it in a great way ... He predicted Gerrie Coetzee becoming world heavyweight champion."
But it was Coetzee and his handlers who tried to scupper Canale's career by effectively accusing him of extortion. They claimed he had written critical articles because they had refused to pay him.
FORCED TO RESIGN
Canale admitted that he'd been paid to do a publicity gig for them - with the permission of his sports editor.
Editor Tertius Myburgh forced him to resign from the Sunday Times and Canale spent a year in the newspaper wilderness, but he bounced back at the Sunday Express to win Sportswriter of the Year in 1979.
"He was set up," said Christodoulou of the Coetzees' claim. "Norman called it as it was and many people didn't like it."
Canale is survived by his third wife, Betty, and three children.
1923-2018..