Inaugurated in 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago, today marks a great day of celebration for all us men out there JOE decided to pay homage to some of the finest exponents of manly men around.
Paul O’Connell
If there is more of a man’s man than Paul O’Connell, then we have yet to find him. And we certainly wouldn’t say it to Paulie’s face.
The Irish captain is quite simply the Chuck Norris of rugby. Fearsome on the pitch, there is no better man to put the “fear of God” into the opposition and to rally his own troops.
Already a legend on these shores, the Lions tour of 2009 cemented his place on a larger stage. Ian McGeechan chose the Munster lock to lead his team into battle against the reigning World Champions and he more than played his role in what was ultimately a losing series. The players immediately took to his leadership style, indeed Martyn Williams described him as the best captain he ever played under.
His humility off the pitch is another factor in why he is firm favourite. Not only did he achieve an excellent Leaving Cert, he was a champions swimmer in his youth, has a handicap that would give some professionals a game and pretty much an all-round sportsman. In some ways you want to hate him, but you just can’t.
Now in the twilight of his career, his passion, determination and his general ability to scare the shi* out of the opposition can never be called into question.
Andrea Pirlo
He might not be manly in the Vinnie Jones ‘I’ll break yer legs’ or Hulk ‘I only know how to hit the ball at 100 miles per hour’ mould but there’s no doubting that the Juventus midfield general is a lover of the finer things in life and a something of a role model for men cut from the same cloth.
Pirlo’s passes are enough to make grown men drool, his free-kicks are so good that similar efforts are described as Pirlo-like and he had enough balls to do this in a crucial penalty shoot-out in the European Championships quarter-final last year.
As well as that, Pirlo’s face is home to one of the finest beards in sport, his family own a vineyard and we imagine that in his spare time, away from prying eyes, he enjoys nothing more than a glass of wine and a fine cigar while sitting at his grand piano, leafing through the pages of Yachting World Magazine.
Jon Hamm
Jon Hamm’s Don Draper character in Mad Men is one of the quintessential men of our times, a figure from the past that looms large over all of us today. He dresses well, has a creative job, and drinks real gentlemanly cocktails like The Old Fashioned. He has seemingly the perfect life in the first series, but as we learn more about him, we see his weaknesses exposed and his life fall apart to a certain extent. It’s a pretty powerful story and despite having some unlikable characteristics, we all still kind of root for Don.
Thankfully, Jon ‘Handomse’ Hamm doesn’t seem to have the same problems, and one of our favourite things is that he’s happy enough to take the piss out of himself, like in his appearance on 30 Rock where he lives in ‘the handsome bubble’. In real life he dresses as snappy as his most famous on-screen persona, and any man who insists on wearing a pocket square with his suit is ok in our book.
Michael Fassbender
Mr Michael Fassbender, universally regarded as one of the most gifted actors working today, may be German-born but, having grown up in Kerry and with his mother hailing from Antrim, has been rightfully claimed as one of Ireland’s finest talents. That’s right Germany, he’s ours so get your stinkin’ hands off him.
Following promising early roles in Guinness ads, Band Of Brothers and 300, the talented thespian shot to fame with his incredibly intense portrayal of Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s harrowing Hunger (2008).
Ever since, he’s had gazillions of top directors queuing up work with him (Ridley Scott/Terence Malick/Quentin Tarantino), while he’s gone on to expertly play everything from a bi-lingual British soldier undercover in Nazi Germany (Lt. Hicox, Inglourious Basterds) to one of the coolest comic book bad guys ever created (Magneto, X-Men: First Class) – not too shabby to say that you’re guy that even Wolverine is afraid of.
Fassbender, along with JOE of course, is the kind of man that the phrase “women want him and men want to be him” was invented for, and you know that you’ve really made it when the King of Hollywood himself, Mr George Clooney, is publicly complimenting you on the size of your, well, Hollywood… (genes from his Irish mother’s side of course).
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