My mate Axel has been in Cape Town for the last couple of weeks, inflicting his David Terbrugge tan on the city's beaches, letting the sounds of David Hasselhof spill out through his iPod, and in the manner of all good Germans abroad, patrolling the city in socks and sandals. If we have anything to thank the Allies for, it's preventing that particular look becoming a global phenomenon.

But Axel (where South Africans are named after entire vehicles, German parents opt for individual parts) has also been making enquiries about the Africa Cup of Nations, and more particularly, why South Africa isn't participating. I've made some vague suggestions about keeping fresh for the World Cup, lack of flights in Luanda, and, um, keeping fresh for the World Cup, but it does feel a little lonely watching the Africa Cup of Nations, and knowing we weren't able to make the cut.

Thankfully there's a World Cup to distract; were this a stand-alone year for the Nations Cup, we'd be feeling particularly sorry for ourselves. But even with three World Cup matches to look forward to, we'd all like to have Bafana in Angola at the moment, both for national pride, and to give an undercooked and undecided team some genuine competition, as Carlos Alberto Parreira juggles his options in search of a side that can somehow get the host nation a fourth match on home soil.

But instead we watch the crux of our team pulling the strings in Everton's midfield, our perennial striking salvation attempt to escape the Blackburn bench for the West Ham bench (one can only hope it's equally well reinforced), and the rest of Africa's World Cup contestants participate in a tournament that, Togo's dreadful misfortune aside, has been a cracking event thus far. Sadly my team of choice is now out of the tournament, after Nigeria's victory last night, although the plus side is that the longer Nigeria remains in action, the less my inbox suffers.

You can tell when Nigeria is playing, as the volume of emails confirming that you've won the Canadian lottery, that your Absa account needs updating, or that a distant relative of a deceased dictator wants you to help shift millions of dollars through illicit bank accounts, drops remarkably. And why wouldn't the land of the 419 scam be glued to television screens: defeat to Egypt aside, this is a strong team, with an excellent coach, and an outside shot at a continental and global double. If nothing else, that would ease the strain on the planet's inboxes substantially, although an ingenious football email hoax wouldn't be too far away.

Sadly Nigeria's success came at the expense of Mozambique, a team I'd been hoping would get through for no other reason than a Mozambican gardener I once employed called Knowledge, a wonderfully inappropriate name pronounced like Delia Smith's football team. In between killing off flower beds and setting fire to the compost heap, he'd chatter away in Portuguese peppered with enough English football terms to make his subject clear, if nothing else; I've no idea where he is now, but he'd have relished a Mozambican victory. Still, at least his team made it to the Cup of Nations...

We've got another week of football in Angola, with all five of the teams headed our way in June contending for the morale boost that winning the tournament would bring; the sixth African team might have been noticeably absent, but as I explained to a luminescent Axel, it's all part of a plan. What exactly that plan is, I'm not entirely sure (having Butana Komphela, a man whose knowledge of sport rivals Julius Malema's grasp of woodwork, deport all foreign footballers for not being South African, is an option worth exploring), but there's definitely a plan. It's just up to Carlos to make it work...

Rugby lost a little of its soul this week, as a Scotsman besotted with the game bade a final farewell. Bill McLaren behind a microphone simply was rugby to so many of us growing up to simple magic of his commentary, and few have defined coverage of a sport as he did rugby. Both Eddie Butler in The Guardian and Simon Barnes in The Times both pay moving tribute to one the game's genuine greats; if rugby union really is the game they play in heaven, then the perfect commentator has just checked in.

Ticket sales for the Castle Cape Town Tens are flying along, and all the more so today, with the confirmation that Tim Horan will be skippering the international side. Fabulous to finally see a genuinely classy centre involved with the Tens; if you haven't got tickets yet, head along to www.capetowntens.com, and block out February 6 and 7 in your diary. The perfect early Valentine's present, perhaps...

Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za