This is the end... my only friend, the end...

So this is it. The End of Movember. Which must mean it's Movember Round in the A-League. Producing quite a decent swag of dirty slugs and poorly thought out lip luggage, but nothing quite on the scale of enthusiastic stealth-ginger midget Roar midfielder Matty McKay a few years ago with a handlebar-inspired, Ned Kelly Goes To The Blue Oyster Bar special that defied description, explanation, gravity and taste all at once. Sadly, yet perhaps thankfully, the interweb contains no photographic evidence of this masterwork. Which means yet again, the goggles do nothing the greatest player never to pull on the gold shirt for his country has to step up and save the A-League's embarrassment. Well one of them anyway, if rubbish crowds, playing in 40 degree temps and Kevin 'Bloody' Muscat aren't enough.




Don't say I never do nuffin' for ya, Australia.

It's been great fun being part of this, both the growing and the cataloguing of the mos in question. Really enjoyed it, and I'm sure my fellow travellers on Team Magnum would say the same. To them, to everyone who donated, and to everyone who joined us on the Movember journey, thanks for making it AWSM.



Oh, and one more thing. Lads... it's been emotional.

The Doctor is OUT to find the clippers and get this bloody thing OFF.

Going Dutch

Yup, looks suspiciously like a mo.

The shirt is an antique, a genuine article 'Bodyhugger' from 1971, which coincidentally was the last time it fitted the old man. It was liberated in a daring raid by my fashionista bro. However only someone with my rugged looks was ever going to do such piece of art (which it is) justice. The motif is allegedly Dutch garden scenes, with the overarching suspicion the designer was consuming the contents of a Dutch garden in combustible form when he came up with the concept.

And in closing, a word from our sponsor.



Ahh spit this ain't real Becks, it's brewed under licence in Auckland.

The Doctor is OUT.

Gimme some money

RIGHT you lot of SCRUFF.


Enough of this fannying about. We're here for one reason and one reason only. We is here fo' tha riches an' tha bitches. Well actually that's two reasons, so we'll settle fo' tha riches. As Spinal Tap put it:

Stop wastin' my time
You know what I want
You know what I need
Or maybe you don't
Do I have to come right flat out and tell you everything...
GIMME SOME MONEY
GIMME SOME MONEY
OH YEAH!



You heard the man. Gimme some money. Get your pasty putrescent arses to http://au.movember.com/mospace/24979 and put your hand in your pocket. Do it for prostate cancer, do it for depression, do it for Jen's dodgy MS Paint skills. Do it or we'll send this questionable Mafia standover man after you. Just do it.


Don't make me and Mr Gray-Nicholls have to come around and pay a little visit.

The Doctor is OUT.

And now a little something... for the ladies.

Yes girls, you asked for it, and WE DELIVERED. A super-rare shot of a NUDE (well, hatless) Dr Yobbo in his (au) natural environment...


Pulling stupid faces at himself in the mirror.

The Doctor is OUT.

This is how we roll

Not bad, Mr Guru Bob. Not bad at all. But, as the skipper points out, very inappropriately dressed.

This be how we roll in the MAGNUM P. TO THA I. MUNTER FUNKIN ALL STARS.



YEEAAAAHHHH. KICKING IT. My face has gone into stasis and hasn't produced a damn thing in three days. But we is KEEPIN IT REAL MAGNUM STYLES.

Witness tha fitness.

A'ight. Peace. Dr Y OUT.

Getting there

Fifth morning update: bit of cover on the pitch


Not as heroically Graham-Hill-dodgy as the one on the Newy Jets' keeper in last night's A-League game, but then again I didn't ship three goals. The one thing about Movember which disappoints is that it's not in the middle of footy season. The A-League boys do their best to grow truly dodgy mo's - to the point of dedicating the last round of play in the month of Movember to the cause - but given that most of Australia wouldn't be able to pick Shane Smeltz out of a lineup let alone tell Kevin Muscat from Kevin 'Bloody' Wilson, it doesn't have quite the same impact as, say, the entire South Sydney first grade team including Rusty Crowe growing big eff-off outlaw handlebar mo's like Lemmy from Motorhead. However, as Team Magnum's Official A-League Correspondent (noone else wanted the gig, or even saw a need for it) I'll be keeping a weather eye on developments in the round ball code and hope to bring you examples of incredibly poorly considered moustache action from the sporting fields of Australia. Cross fingers for some representation from the nation's cricketers as well.

The Doctor is OUT.

May contain nudity

Nude faces that is. I'll kick off the 'Before' shots on this, the first day of Movember. This is the first time my face has seen a razor in at least 4 years. Forgot to get any shaving cream in either. Dry scrapage very much not FTW. This is why I own clippers folks.






Gentlemen, start your mo's.

The Doctor is OUT.

A shorter history of facial hair

Hi there. I'm Dr Yobbo. You may remember me from such blogs as Dr Yobbo's World of Bollocks or that dodgy one about ficticious rock bands or that food one of Beeso's which I can't think of anything to write for now that Dr Mrs Dr Yobbo is doing the cooking. Although for the purposes of this discussion (or at least for the Movember team registration) I'm not Dr Yobbo, I'm a James Smith, whatever that is. Why James Smith? Well John Smith would have been too obvious, Ian Smith was a gobby NZ wicketkeeper, Smith & Smith are the Kiwi version of Windscreens O'Brien and Engelbert Humperdinck would have made no bloody sense whatsoever. So James Smith it is. Apparently.

Now that we've got introductions out of the way... facial hair, the uses and etiquette thereof. And whether it's ever appropriate for gingas to grow any. It's a pertinent point as we have a decent ranga contingent amongst our playing roster this Movember, yours included - though as a ranga of Etruscan descent at least I'm a class apart from you Celtic convict bloodnuts - and while some engagingly deluded womenfolk seem to find this attractive, it's a simple fact that ginger facial hair suits nobody, apart from Dutch porn stars and geography teachers.

I first grew a beard about ten years ago. It was a goatee, because it was the '90s, and it was what you did back in those heady post-grunge days. I didn't grow it to look like a geography teacher. I grew it because I was 21 and sick of being carded for ID everywhere I went... pubs, clubs, bottle shops, cinemas, video rental stores, driver licencing offices, you name it. Even got carded by my parents at home once. Fact. Apparently I wasn't getting in with these shoes, but I knew they just reckoned I had dodgy ID.

Anyway, it worked. I stopped getting carded and I also started getting orders of magnitude more action with The Ladies, though with the proviso that ten times bugger all is still not much. Later, during a particularly productive period of unemployment, the goatee became a full beard. It went everywhere with me. I got married in it. Even took it on holiday. Here it is enjoying a beer at the World Superbikes at Brands Hatch in the UK last year with me and my mate Chris who appears to be about to be struck by lightning, but as it turns out, wasn't. Probably because he was protected by the AWSMness of my shifty ginger beard. I have no scientific basis to support this claim, which makes it at least as efficacious a cure as homeopathy.

However, after that things grew a little sour. We grew apart. Well, to be honest, there was violence involved. I admit it. I attacked my beard with a set of clippers. It was unprovoked and it was brutal. I don't know what it was. I guess I was just sick of looking like a geography teacher. Since then, apart from a carefully maintained frisson of stubble, facial hair and Your Correspondent have gone our separate ways.

Until now.

Well, it's for charity, I guess. And as Alexei Sayle once pointed out, you can do whatever the hell you like for charity. If Hitler had invaded Poland for spina bifida it would have been all right.

Godwinned already? Time I got out of here. Photos of our hideous nude faces (a.k.a. the 'Before' shots) to follow shortly. This is all for a good cause, so if you find any of the mo's on show impressive, amusing, faintly terrifying or just plain laughable, dig deep and lob some coin at our team page on Movember.com.

Anyway, I didn't want to look like a geography teacher. I wanted to look like... a LUMBERJACK!

But that's another, duller, story.

The Doctor is OUT.