Parreira breaks hearts while airlines enter war

McCarthy has netted 31 times in 79 internationals in an on-off love-affair with the national side that has lasted 13 years. That it finally ended in heart-break for the player and his legions of fans - most of whom are confined to the Western Cape - is both disappointing and strangely sad.

But Bafana Bafana coach Carlos Alberto Parreira made the right decision. The West Ham forward was palpably unfit and with just 10 days to go to the start of the tournament, he was not at the level required for a World Cup campaign. To keep him on and discard another would be grossly unfair.

Perhaps more surprising to many was the ditching of Bryce Moon, a versatile right-sided player who can turn out in either defence or midfield. For the others, goalkeeper Rowen Fernandez, Innocent Mdledle and Franklin Cale, the chop was not unexpected.

Down under on top

The World Cup came to Roodepoort on Tuesday as Australia edged Denmark 1-0 in a warm-up game that fans will hope is not a portent of things to come.

It was pretty uninspiring stuff, and was settled with fluke goal from Joshua Kennedy at the Ruimsig Stadium. There was also more criticism for the adidas official World Cup ball, Jabulani, from Danish coach Martin Olsen. "We played with an impossible ball and we need to get used to it," he said.

Meanwhile, more sides named their final 23-man squads for the final before the midnight deadline, not least the English, who always downplay their chances of winning the trophy in public, but are secretly hopeful that they can repeat their triumph of 1966.

But do the names Jamie Carragher, Emile Heskey, Matthew Upson, Stephen Warnock or Shaun Wright-Phillips sound like World Cup winners to you? Me neither. Coach Fabio Capello will be hopeful that his big-name stars such as Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard can make up for the lack of world-class depth in his selection.

Watch this one

If I can offer you one piece of advice for this World Cup, go get a ticket for a match involving Cote d'Ivoire. Their Swedish coach Sven-Goran Eriksson has named a squad that is the attacking equal of the top teams in the tournament, but defensively have the look of a particularly poor circus act. The fact that they have Brazil and Portugal in their group adds further spice!

Finally, it is great to see the low-cost airlines kulula.com, 1Time and Mango in a price war ahead of the tournament as they try to sell-off the excess seats they had predicted they would sell to one of the 450 000-odd foreign visitors the country expected before the global recession bit and the international media really started to harp on about crime and terror in Mzansi.

Perhaps they now regret pricing ordinary folk and business travellers out of the market when the seats first went on sale at four times the normal price some months ago. Never count your chickens...