For many local sportsman, ageing gracefully isn’t so much a choice, as it is inevitable.

The hairline begins marching back, and eventually what started as small, concealed, driveways to ones temples turn into a fully-fledged airport car park.

If the bathroom mirror, his pillow case, or the shower plug-hole haven’t alerted a thinning man to his fate, you can bet his mates have… or even worse, an opponent – and that’s their right to do so.

Baldness based insults are not only fair game, they should be fertile ground for sledgers in the heat of battle - particularly those with rock-solid hairlines of their own.

“I used to have a mane down to my ass and loved letting bald fellas know about it” said local bald man Tim Trilby.

The follicularly challenged victims know it’s well within the rules and just part of the game. That was until twenty odd years ago when a plucky Aussie offie took matters, and some re-purposed horse hair, into his own hands.

Greg Matthews was all too familiar with male pattern baldness. He’d been cursed at a young age, hearing all the usual taunts of “Egg head” and being labelled a “Balding old expletive” – so he, with the help of Advanced Hair Studios, decided to fight back.

“I thought f&*k ‘em. I’ll take away their one wood…”

Moe, as he’s affectionately known, decided to get a brown and gray mat glued to his cranium to nullify the sledging of his nemesis’s. The outcome was dramatic.

Not only did his looks improve, so too did his previously nude off-breaks. It wasn’t long after that Matthews was holding his hair piece on with a nice crisp baggy green cap, and the rest is history.

Matthews isn’t the only sportsperson to benefit from a wig. He’s not even the only cricketer, and in actual fact, his bold move opened the floodgates for men like Graeme Gooch, Shane Warne, Ricky Ponting, Michael Vaughan and Jacques Kallis, to name a few. In other sports, England football captain Wayne Rooney famously underwent a follicular transplant, as did Holland’s Wesley Sneijder, which leads me to the point of this article.

Are hair-pieces, transplants, and hair-growth hormones (like propecia and finasteride) performance enhancing? In the eyes of the World Anti Doping Body WADA, that answer is yes.

“An athlete with an obvious achilles heel like baldness can’t just go and use a prosthesis to overcome it. It’s like a short person wearing stilts to play basketball or volleyball – it’s in the least a bad look, and at worst blatant cheating” said WADA President, Fredrik Schitt-Wiggins.

Doctor Rudolph Glue, the heir to the Advanced Hair fortune, has lashed the decision. Speaking today from him companies hair fitting head office, he said his staff are doing “God’s work”, and stated that his product is actually a burden for most men.

“Did you see Andre Agassi in 1990 French Open? It cost him the match.”

Mr Glue said he and his direct competitor, Ashley Martin, had discussed fighting the ruling.

SportChamps reached out to Shane Warne and more of his bald brethren today for comment, but none are yet to return our calls.

More to come.

Paul Morello

I'm Paul, and I model my life, laugh and hair on Mark Bosnich. There's no animal, athlete or team that can carry the weight of my money.