KEY POINTS:
All power to the Aussie NRL characters on mercy work in Rwanda. As for thinking the mission will somehow sort out fallen Canberra star Todd Carney's raging alcohol problem though, think again.
Taking Carney to Rwanda to sort out his boozing ways will be about as productive as telling someone with cancer they will be cured by mowing the lawn.
Carney is still drinking over there. People reckon Carney is stupid (although those in the know will realise he is in fact afflicted by a disease). But he is a dead-set genius next to those who reckon the answers to his problem lie in Rwanda.
It is a noble but naive concept, and also vaguely comical. What next - drug addicts to the Congo? What's the bet that as soon as Carney steps off the plane, he'll dive into a pub on the premise that he needs to drive Rwanda's horrors from his head. Serious drinkers have hit the bottle for a lot less.
* International league shot itself in the foot again with the banning of Fuifui Moimoi and Taniela Tuiaki from the Tongan World Cup team. The league bosses might think they've got important rules to follow, but to the general sports population they are splitting unimportant hairs in robbing Tonga of two potential stars.
Why bother unless you have hardline one-country-per-player rules all round? The banning of these two is a case of generating even more chaos out of disorder.
What needs to be stamped out is the ridiculous situation in which Anthony Tupou hopped from Tonga's final squad into Australia's final squad, and the selecting of players when there is still doubt over their eligibility.
You can only shake your head at a system that bans two key players from a weak team and allows a player from that same team to jump ship and join the tournament favourites.
* From the jargon department ... league commentators (and others) are obsessed with the phrase "back end" as if it is a technical term that elevates their art and enlightens the listener. Like heck it is. What's wrong with the word "end"? At the end of the game, at the end of the set of six, at the end of the season, and so on and so forth. Here's to seeing the back end of back end. Oops.
* Luke Watson overstepped the mark when he talked of wanting to vomit on the Springbok jersey. If he wears the thing, then he should respect it. But there's no denying that the Springbok symbol still represents a dreadful past and many South Africans will never support the wearers of it.
An acquaintance was recently in Buffalo Flats, a coloured area of East London, and noticed a house that was daubed in an "All Blacks" sign. Yet rugby has it good compared with soccer, apparently.
Soccer is easily the No 1 sports code in South Africa, and given the African continent's flair for the game it should be surprising they are such minnows. I am told there is so much infighting in South African soccer it makes their crazy rugby union look like the German transport system.
There is an even sadder side to their soccer - headlines like "Striker shot dead" have been known to constitute match previews.
* How on earth did the All Whites jump 57 places to 54 after beating New Caledonia, who are ranked at 133, in Fifa's world rankings? Sport is obsessed with continually updated rankings that are often a load of hogwash that obscure the real joys of sport.
