Super 14 semis: Reds to the rescue?

It is increasingly looking like Australia will have only one team in the Super 14 final four. And it looks like being Queensland, an idea that would have attracted ridicule a year ago. After another win over a South African team at their Fortress Suncorp, Ewen McKenzie's Reds are in the box seat to make the semi-finals, although they have only one of their three remaining games in Brisbane, a tricky match against the lowly Highlanders on May 15. The derby date with the Brumbies in Canberra on May 1 looms as another must-win, given that the Hurricanes will be a difficult proposition in Wellington on May 7. Getting Queensland to the semis would make McKenzie a firm favourite for Australia's football coach of the year - although Craig Bellamy could be poised to pull off something truly spectacular in the coaching line! (And speaking of Super 14, it would be remiss not to mention the Western Force's sterling work in pulling off the upset of the season in Perth on Friday, knocking off the top-of-the-table Crusaders.)

Cuckolded by Qatar?

Australia's bid for the World Cup soccer finals in 2022, which is rivalled by Japan, the USA and Qatar, has taken an apparent blow with the expression of support made at the weekend by FIFA boss Sepp Blatter for Qatar's bid (we're also bidding for 2018, which is considered more likely to go back to Europe, while Qatar is only seeking 2022.) Sure, Qatar has on the drawing boards the usual clutch of money-is-no-object, state-of-the-art stadia possessed by any self-respecting Gulf emirate awash with gas dollars. Sure, the fact that Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam, is a Qatari is of more than slight relevance here; as is the fact that he is stalking Blatter's job. But the ambience for an influx of Cup tourists of watching a World Cup in 50-degree heat in a country where beer is presently banned (outside the big hotels) ought to pop on to the agenda - as should Australia's political stability, which can be reasonably be expected to last the distance at least to 2022. But, of course, it's the more serpentine FIFA politics that will decide this.

T20 world titles tee off this week

Game on in the Caribbean. In the region where the One Day International can be said to have finally entered its terminal phase, with the strangely soulless 2007 World Cup and its farcical finish, cricket's youngest code, T20, kicks off its World Championship this week. The ICC appears to have learned its lesson from the World Cup, tailoring the length of the tournament to the format, packing the games into fortnight. The IPL has generated strong momentum for the T20 code, and the beauty of the unpredictable format means that we should see some great cricket that belies the rankings in the longer game. For example, with habitual ball-sprayers of the Lee and Johnson ilk to offer them guaranteed juicy width, there is no reason why a side like Bangladesh wouldn't fancy themselves against an Australia that has struggled with the code until quite recently, and had a poor T20 World Cup last year. It's a new regime under Michael Clarke, newly rid of his tabloid accoutrements, and it will be fascinating to see whether the side can return to the status it once boasted in all forms of the game. Australia kicks off against the reigning champs, Shahid Afridi's Pakistan, on May 2: bring it on!

Anzac Day: sorry you other clubs, but the horse has bolted

The groundswell of support for opening up Anzac Day for clubs other than Collingwood and Essendon. Anzac Day has come and gone, and with it the tiresome comparisons between the nation's war veterans and the players, who also "go into battle". (Yeah, tell it to the boys on HMAS Perth, who if they survived the hopeless, outnumbered battle, and the sinking, then most likely died working on the Burma railway.) Also tiresome is the call for a change of cast on the day. All that Collingwood and Essendon really have on their side of this argument is the status of incumbency, and the fact that they can guarantee a 90,000-plus crowd and massive TV audience. You can't really use the word ‘tradition' to describe a 16-year track record, but Anzac Day is well on its way to being something like the Army-Navy football game in the US, England v. Scotland in rugby or Barcelona v Real Madrid in La Liga. But the argument should not be one of opening up the Anzac Day occasion to other clubs that might - in terms of temporary status - "deserve" it more than Collingwood and Essendon (and I personally have to face the fact that Essendon's pitiful effort yesterday didn't exactly shout from the rooftops that it particularly prizes its involvement). The argument should be one of the AFL being more creative in designing its schedule: why not open with a Grand Final rematch (instead of Carlton's ritual murder of Richmond) on a Saturday, billed as "Opening Day", so that everyone comes to understand that the season can't get under way until the reigning Grand Finalists have duked it out again? Or use Easter Monday for that purpose, and give it all the trappings? For the 14 other clubs, the Anzac Day horse has bolted: move on.

Stephen Milne's goal of the year

Give the pesky Saints' No.44 the Phil Manassa Medal and the Toyota Kluger now. Surely no-one will top Milne's third-quarter effort at a slippery AAMI Stadium on Saturday night, when he flung a boot at a greasy ball that was going out of bounds in the right-hand forward pocket, almost parallel with the goal-line, and was not sitting in the air at anything like a spatial orientation that would allow Milne to get the necessary purchase on the instep, but he somehow channelled his alter ego (Steven Milne, the striker with Scottish Premier League side St. Johnstone) and guided it through, spinning like a top in the air. In a close struggle it looked like being the piece of magic that would sway it, but Port had other ideas.

Who knew that Dean Bailey was a fan of Kipling?

On Saturday night, I knew that Melbourne had won, but where I was, the sound on the TV had been turned off. Dean Bailey's press conference came on. Immediately I was struck by the Demons coach's demeanour: you would have thought they had lost. But that's because, prior to most of his press conferences, they had done. Body language is all the rage today on BPL - check out that of IPL chief Lalit Modi in the video clip at above right - and I think it speaks volumes that Bailey's calm discussion of his team's third straight was conducted in the same manner as all of his dissections of spiritless floggings. He could certainly have been forgiven a bit of aggression toward the press, a bit of vindication, the chance to thrust out the jaw and say, "will all you blokes who have slagged us now admit we can play?" But clearly he has read and imbibed Kipling's If: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same." (Which may be a very apposite poem for a fifth-quarter presser, given that the next lines read: "If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.")