I’m not the biggest fan, especially not of the tattoos, swimming pools with mosaic inlays with the name, rubber scrotums hanging from the back of 3-litre bakkies. But. GO BLOUBULLE! Watching the game down in Oudtshoorn of all places was quite a treat, although I had to forgo the ‘traditional’ branners and Coke and stick to soft drinks. Something about bike racing on Sunday.

Once again the spectacle put on at Loftus and which must have contained more than a handful of international visitors in that sea of blue, added fuel to our contention at Shine2010, that South Africa is going to knock the socks of the world when the World Cup gets here. Let’s just hope ole Joel Santana is able to whip Bafana into some sort of shape to put up some decent resistance.

In related news, I recently interviewed the City of Tshwane CEO for the 2010 soccer World Cup programme Godfrey Nkwane. While he is of course super-excited about Confeds Cup about to kick off in his fair city, the points we discussed were that 2010 is going to leave a lasting legacy in terms of infrastructure boosts, improved safety and security (although this does not necessarily follow from the premise that more metro cops means better safety and security...stories of corrupt or criminal cops are a little too thick on the ground. And we have the hangover of Robert McBride’s alarming tenure to deal with) and international exposure. Nice.

I also did a project last week looking at the economic benefit of the events for the typical business. The long and the short of it is that you should not try ambush marketing like Eastwood’s Tavern (also, coincidentally, in Pretoria) as FIFA is likely to, as Samuel L Jackson might intone, strike down with great vengeance and furious anger. Rather, the benefit is likely to be a rather greyer one. By that, I mean it is likely to be a macro-economic benefit which filters down at some or another level to many, many businesses.
Complicated stuff, but there you are.

OK, all together now. Let’s sing a rendition of ‘Liefling’...