Not surprisingly for a competition forced by its pool structure to go through the motions for a week, relevant cricket has been thin on the ground at the International Cricket Council Champions Trophy. The predicted poor turnouts and disconsolate weather have materialised, but where there’s a deadline there’s a headline, and frostbitten captains have been herded into press conferences to shrug and grumble about this and that.

Unbelievable as it may seem, the last time that Moroka Swallows met Kaizer Chiefs in a major cup competition was 17 years ago, when Chiefs won 3-1 on aggregate in the two-legged final of the Ohlssons Cup. The first leg (won 2-1 by Chiefs) was at Kings Park in Durban. Those who were there in 1987 say that game was the most memorable match played between the two sides, and the two legs are said to have recorded the biggest aggregate crowd in South African football history — 130 000 people.

From combat jackets in Kiawah Island to matching corporate suits at The Belfry, the outfits of the United States’s Ryder Cup players and their partners have, in the past, supported the notion that those on the other side of the Atlantic view the golf course as a place for both battle and business.

Twenty-four hours before arriving in England for his team’s decisive match against Newcastle United on Thursday, the chairperson of Hapoel Bnei Sakhnin, Mazen Gnaiem, still had no idea which airport his team was about to arrive at. Indeed, he was rather surprised to discover that London had more than one.

When less than 1% of your public has met you, but everyone has an opinion about you, it might be said that you have made it. Here in South Africa we know better. That Schalk Burger? Long hair, good attitude, gives away too many penalties, Jake White likes him. Luke Watson? Short hair, good attitude, gives away too many penalties, Jake White doesn’t like him.

Okay, you crazed students of English football, it’s time for an early squint at the Premiership table. Arsenal, unbeaten in 45 games, have made a perfect, goal-happy start, Chelsea remain unbeaten two points behind them with upstarts Bolton struggling for oxygen in third. Then drop lower down the table.

The romance of football is wonderful just so long as you don’t have to watch it too often. While respecting a runty, underfunded and frankly unentertaining team that knocks out an illustrious club, many people have to suppress a sense of regret. It’s bad form to say out loud that you’re going to miss the star players who have just been eliminated.

With precious little to crow about since the last time England looked to a cocky young Tottenham player for inspiration, those who have spent the post-Gazza years traipsing to White Hart Lane will this season be excused for skipping all the way. Maybe the years of miserable mediocrity are coming to an end.