Café King, a bar in Berlin’s fashionable Charlottenburg district, is at the centre of a match-fixing scandal that has sent shockwaves through Germany’s football establishment, and has heaped growing embarrassment on the nation as it prepares to host the 2006 World Cup.

Look, it’s no good pretending. It’s going to take more than a little slip-up against Manchester City to let the rest catch Chelsea this season. But there is hope after that 0-0 draw, which was inspired by Manchester City’s bigger-than-he-looks David James. But it’s not an on-field, close-the-nine-point gap sort of hope. It’s called ”tapping up”.

If the world were a just place, Wednesday night’s emphatic victory by South Africa would have come as an immense relief to United Cricket Board boss Gerald Majola. Indeed, in a utopian society where merit was rewarded and ineptitude censured, Majola would have trundled down on to the Buffalo Park turf and given Graeme Smith a hug.

There has been an increase in the number of Premier Soccer League players who have been caught using cannabinoids (dagga), a prohibited substance. Two more players in the league will face the South African Football Association disciplinary committee for using this banned substance.