This time last year it was the season to be jolly - jolly wrong about a lot of things, that is.

Making wildly inaccurate predictions for 2007 (especially that the Rugby World Cup was as good as won for the All Blacks) was grossly irresponsible.

Apologies, particularly as some people seemed to think it was all the media's fault for being so cocky. But there was also the odd success.

This newspaper was Nostradamus-like in declaring that the New Zealand cricket team didn't have a hope in hell of winning the World Cup, and so it proved to be.

Back to the negatives. Hands up here, because we did fail to give the public an inkling that the cricket tournament in the West Indies may be tainted by a murder plot. And we failed to signal that the NZRU would set up a commission to investigate itself.

Which goes to show that you never know what's around the corner in sport, unless you happen to be playing Australia at cricket.

Here's an honest attempt at telling it like it will be for 2008.

Australians may not always understand what their new rugby coach is on about.
There's a good chance that the Wallabies will improve their recent win-loss record under Robbie Deans, but a rugby mob raised on the sharp tongues of Alan Jones, John O'Neill and Eddie Jones is in for confusing times.

"We will be a lot better for this experience and will grow from it but it does show we have a great ethic and positivityness in the group," might sound like the keynote address at the Guidance Counsellor of the Year awards but Australians might find it is also a major plank in a Bledisloe Cup victory speech.

Note: Positivityness is a word Robbie Deans will invent in 2008.

Scott Dixon will NOT run out of petrol.
Not even when he's mowing the lawn. If there is the slightest doubt about his ability to finish, Dixon will make that long walk back to the garden shed for a refuel. If you happen to see a bloke trying to wring a few more drops out of a nozzle at your local petrol station, it's probably Scott Dixon.

A multi-choice, interactive question for 2008

Graham Henry will be:
A: Exactly the same?

B: No different to what he's always been?

C: Ted to a T?