The vuvuzelas may have sounded the Last Post on England's dismal World Cup campaign, but let's not be too downhearted. FIFA President and luddite-in-chief Sepp Blatter has now apologised to the FA for that refereeing blunder on Sunday that saw Frank Lampard's goal disallowed. Goal-line technology will surely be coming soon to a football stadium near you, closely followed (I hope) by Blatter on a platter. Satisfied? No, me neither.
As the British press put the boot into Fabio Capello and his men, Wimbledon had the problem of trying follow up what some have dubbed Magic Monday. The 4th round of the Championships had seen Andy Roddick's sensational exit at the hands of one Yen-Hsun Lu, the man forgetful BBC commentators insisted on calling "the man from Chinese Taipei". Elsewhere, drama queen Novak Djokovic unwisely indulged in a spot of chest-baring after defeating Lleyton Hewitt, while Kim Clijsters got the better of Justine Henin in "the battle of the Belgians".
So the line-up for Ladies quarter finals day looked very much like a case of Venus Williams, Serena Williams, super mom Clijsters and a bunch of other people who aren't exactly household names. Previewing the action, BBC DJ Richard Bacon attempted to stir things a bit with tennis correspondent Jonathan Overend by suggesting the prospect of another Williams vs Williams final was "boring". The appropriate response to this ill-informed nonsense from a broadcasting non-entity like Bacon would, of course, contain several expletives and the word "up". I'll leave it to your imagination.
As it turned out, the results were anything but predictable. I must admit that Venus's latest opponent, Tsvetana Pironkova, was a new "ova" on me. If pressed, I might have hazarded a guess that she was a statuesque blonde from the Russian Federation, with a decent two-handed backhand, an American accent and the word Bolliettieri stamped somewhere about her person.
But Pironkova turns out to be ...
...a 22-year-old Bulgarian brunette with a previous win over the number 2 seed and a refreshingly positive attitude towards tackling the Williams juggernaut: "I thought I could win. I was really going for it." Venus was soon hitting the heights on the shriek-o-meter, but her game was misfiring and she committed 29 unforced errors as she crashed to a 6-2, 6-3 defeat — her worst display at Wimbledon.
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