• Our hearts bleed, Christchurch
Don't even think about it. Don't contemplate, for a minute, feeling sorry for the one-eyed rugby folk of Canterbury.
Don't think NZRU chief Steve Tew has been harsh in suggesting The Stadium of 1000 Names might miss out on All Black tests in the future because of poor ticket sales for tonight's game.
Don't excuse the APPALLINGLY low sales because "it's just Italy" or "there's no Richie or Dan".
Above all, don't forget that Dunedin had a gun held to its head for years and was told it had better sell out or else, and poor old Carisbrook was ignored altogether in both 2006 and 2007. You didn't hear much sympathy from north of the Waitaki in those years.
So don't feel sorry for Christchurch. Not even for a second.
• Flip, flop, flip, flop . . .
Surprise, surprise. There's to be more change for what used to be called the NPC and was once the greatest rugby competition in the world.
Sigh.
Plenty of us are still angry the NZRU tinkered with the successful three-division formula in the first place, introducing promotion-relegation games (dumb), inviting 14 teams into a premier division (insane), having a modified round robin in the first season (bizarre) dumping Tasman and Northland (dim), letting them stay (dimmer) and generally letting the championship slide into oblivion (sadly predictable).
• . . . and back to flip again
Now the latest in a series of workshops has resolved to cut the premier division to 10 teams, place the unlucky four in some sort of middle division with as-yet-unknown opposition, and retain the successful Heartland Championship, or at least a version of it.
This should never have happened. The three-tier provincial system worked.
Forget the idea of B teams in a new "division one". Who seriously wants to see North Otago or Wanganui playing some invented team called the Auckland Dynamos or the Canterbury Cardinals?
We have to accept the NPC will never be what it was, now the All Blacks play 15-16 tests a year and the Super competition has been expanded.
But it can still be saved. Go back to three divisions, have automatic promotion-relegation, make it amateur, don't televise every game and elevate the Ranfurly Shield to its position of supreme importance.
• Clubs of origin
As a long-time Queensland fan, watching this year's State of Origin and one of the all-time great Maroon teams has been marvellous.
I particularly enjoy the way the teams are presented on the television coverage. The players step forward, look at the camera, say their name, then - in a really nice touch - say the name of the club to which they were first affiliated.
They're all called the Tooboolomba Sharks or the Burrybudgerigar Devils or similar. But Queensland captain Darren Lockyer's club has the exotic name of Roma Cities. Isn't that fantastic?
Turns out Roma is a small town about 500km from Brisbane, home to Australia's biggest cattleyards and the place that gave rugby league Arthur Beetson, Brent Tate and Lockyer.
• Spot the former Nugget
Weird to think the Waikato Pistons have won the National Basketball League title with two former Nuggets (Mike Fitchett and Justin Bailey) in their starting five.
Look around the league, which shamefully did not feature an Otago team this year for the first time in two decades, and you see ex-Nugs everywhere: in Nelson (Phill Jones and Darryl Jones), Auckland (Hayden Allen), North Harbour (Dan Ryan), Hawkes Bay (Miles Pearce and Ben Hill), Manawatu (Kaine Hokianga) and Canterbury (Sam To'omata).
Albeit on a much smaller scale, the Nuggets have been about as successful at player retention as Otago rugby, which hasn't seen a good player yet that it doesn't think might do better in Southland.
• When no-names become stars
Perhaps it's a bit unkind to say Lucas Glover was a golfing nobody before he won the rain-affected US Open earlier this week.
He'd gone in ranked 71st in the world, which means only 70 players were rated higher than him and about a billion were given less chance of winning.
But the fact remains Glover was a no-name to most of us, and this is what still confounds me about golf.
Is it a good thing that a virtual wildcard can come from nowhere to win one of the four big tournaments? Is it understandable, given the unique nature of a sport played over four days, in unpredictable conditions, where one bad day can ruin a tournament?
Or is it one of the sport's major failings? Shouldn't the best players win the big events?
• Double-D nearly got an A-plus
While Glover provided another case of a surprise Major winner (see Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis, Rich Beem, that Campbell bloke) and Phil "The Bridesmaid" Mickelson did well to compete with his mind on his wife's battle with breast cancer, the real story of the Open was the effort of a paunchy 37-year-old from Denver.
It's strange to think there are plenty around who won't even remember the 1998-2001 period when David Duval was No 1 in the world for a time and the only golfer who seemed capable of stopping the Tiger Woods juggernaut.
His fall was as sudden as his rise.
He had back, wrist and shoulder problems, personal issues and a touch of vertigo. His early to mid-30s passed in a blur, and all of a sudden he'd gone eight years without winning a tournament.
This is Duval's last year as an exempt player on the PGA Tour, courtesy of his earnings in a career highlighted by his British Open win in 2001.
He had to go through sectional qualifying to play in the US Open, was tied for the lead with two holes to play and finished two shots behind Glover.
His best Tour finish in seven years lifted Duval from 882 to 142 in the world golf rankings. Maybe he's not finished after all.
• That's a lot of lets
The Pirates Squash Club is holding a 24-hour "squashathon" this weekend.
From 4pm today until 4pm tomorrow, there will be continuous squash at the club courts at Hancock Park. The club is trying to raise money for maintenance and individual players have been gathering sponsorships.
