It is that unpredictability that keeps us interested and enthralled.
AS it is some years since I have taken the reluctant cold pre-dawn sports-watching crawl out of bed to huddle under the duvet before the telly, I was disappointed there was no Keith Quinn yelling "good night nurse", "hold the phone!" or "time is ticking away".
Instead, because I had arisen too early, I had to put up with some unknown bleary-eyed chaps sitting awkwardly in a technicolour set (or was I still dreaming?) talking the nervous time-wasting nonsense we have come to know and ignore in television sports coverage.
Using the time wisely to fill the hottie, and make tea and toast, I tried to keep my mind on sport.
Unsportingly, I wondered if the media,with their recent enthusiasm for examining every cent spent on overseas trips, had asked any questions about John man-of-the-people Key turning up to the New Zealand v Italy game in South Africa.
Was his trip, which did involve some other engagements, really justified or just an excuse for another unflattering photo opportunity of him in a T-shirt?Somehow, I had avoided seeing any of the earlier World Cup games so I was ready to be impressed by the New Zealand team's prowess in its match against Paraguay.
And impressed I was.
As I watched, I was grateful that much about sport remains mysterious (and, for the benefit of those who have had to put up with my ignorance of any sport you care to name, I am not talking about the rules).
It is a subject which has been much discussed in my household over the years when sporting teams involving the offspring have lost games they should have won and won games they should have lost.
It is that unpredictability that keeps us interested and enthralled; a point which should be remembered by sports officials as sports become increasingly big business and every move is subjected to intense scrutiny.
Sports watchers don't want sports played by automatons or to know that the richest person or team with the best training programme and the biggest muscles will always win.
Teams which win too regularly are actually boring, especially if they always win by miles.
We can't moan about their commitment or call for their coaches' heads to roll.
Such teams also do not give us the chance to believe in the little guy being able to triumph against the odds.
The closest we have come to the world cup of anything in my household was the national Under-18 boys hockey tournament in 2005, played in Dunedin.
While the Otago team did not have a particularly low ranking, it would be fair to say at the start of the tournament it would not have been fancied to win.
(Though the team had some classy individual players, none of them was picked for the national age-group team after that tournament.)
But win they did.
With every game we parents dared to hope the boys might get a little further.
Strong on both defence and attack, they remained unbeaten, coming close to losing only in the semifinal when, against Northland, with the game even at fulltime, it went to strokes.
Then I remember a fellow parent putting into words what I suspect we were all thinking - that she had gone beyond just being grateful they had come so far.
"I want them to win," she said.
In the final game, our second win against Auckland in the tournament, Otago's coach was so sure his starting line-up would do the business, he took the unusual step of making no substitutions during the match.
I have often thought about that tournament.
What was it that made that combination of young men at that particular time perform so well?If they had been called to play at that level a week later, would they have been able to do it?There is no answer of course.
And that's the beauty of it.
We can analyse it until we are blue in the face, but we can't come up with a categorical answer.
Long may it be so.
Unfortunately, despite their best efforts and me willing them on from the depths of the duvet, the All Whites did not win.
Unlike our hockey team's experience, the analysis around this event will be long and public and the boys in white and their coach will face unrealistic future expectations.
At the end of the drawn game, watching the reaction of the stunned New Zealand fans, I found the words of Iris Dement's song Our Town flooding into my empty head.
"And you know the sun's setting fast, And just like they say nothing good ever lasts ..."
I stumbled back to bed and awaited the sunrise.
Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
