Well, there’s a thing. Us fancy football fundamentalists all cram up on the African Nations Cup and proclaim Nigeria, Senegal and Cameroon as the clear favourites. Geniuses aren’t we? Thing is, for these three great African footballing powers, it very nearly is all over in Tunisia.

When the Gunners’ vice-chairperson, David Dein, popped over to spend £16,4-million on Jose Antonio Reyes in Spain on Wednesday, the moths in his wallet made a desperate bid for freedom. The once-bulging Arsenal piggy bank hasn’t been touched since Jens Lehmann arrived for £1,5-million in the summer.

South Africa’s once-hopeful African Cup of Nations crusade is looking like a lost cause. A cause so lost even the most optimistic Bafana Bafana supporter couldn’t trace it. Think needle and haystack. Metal detector on the blink. Very big haystack. Most of the needle stuck in the coach’s back. That’s how bad things are.

I visited Highbury for the umpteenth time on Tuesday with the towering youths who infest my house, masquerading as children. After watching the table-topping Gunners slide to a 1-0 defeat in the first leg of the League Cup semifinal, their first loss in 30 games on the domestic scene, I came to three logical conclusions.

Mark Quayle is 25. He is the only Scarborough player who cost a fee. Quayle, scorer of the only goal in the third round FA Cup tie against Southend United, cost precisely £2 000. His goal has earned the little seaside town a guaranteed payday of about £400 000 as they take on Chelsea.

Arsenal versus Middlesbrough. You’ll learn to love those words. The teams meet four times over the next 18 days. On Saturday at Highbury, it’s a mere Premiership clash. The unbeaten Gunners, held 1-1 at Everton on Wednesday, come against one of the meanest defences in the division.

Raining champions. That’s what they’ll call England when the Rugby World Cup is taken from Australia’s jealous grasp on Saturday. On Thursday night, it poured down. Sydney awoke to a monsoon every bit as soggy as the one that sunk the French last Sunday. And this holds some advantages for England.

Nobody in the record-size gathering of 82 957 will ever forget the night Jonny Wilkinson won the World Cup. England had the bloody thing in the bag twice, but lost it to the boot of Elton Flatley. Then, when it mattered, the Wilkinson drop goal snatched it with seconds left at the end of the second period of extra time.

Ah, the turd place play-off. Excuse the Irish accent. In sport nobody wants to finish second. Third is bloody rubbish and fourth is out of the question. But there we were, watching the vanquished semifinalists, France and New Zealand, decide who were the bigger losers. The All Blacks finished on top of the dung heap.

The Manly Pacific hotel is under siege. All day long white-clad rather-barmy armies of rugby fans have been arriving like an invading force while England name their team inside, dropping Mike Catt for the robust Mike Tindall at centre. The latest counts suggest upwards of 35 000 English fans have come for the Rugby World Cup final.