It hurts, I know it does. It hurts like losing your dog to a freak chainsaw accident, like walking in on your girlfriend/wife in bed with Arnold Geerdts or like waking up after a big night only to find you have lost your wallet, car keys and need to somehow release your arm from the clutches of a girl you wouldn’t ordinarily touch with a stranger’s barge pole. The Bok loss on Sunday hurt in so many ways that I’m still a little too devastated to talk about it, but there is something that I can’t help but acknowledge – how bright the future of Springbok rugby is!

Into the playoffs we go, the knockout stages, the all or nothing reckoning rounds - the place where the winner takes all. Whatever you want to call it, the press conferences at RWC 2011 to come from here on in are going to be highly focused affairs where the crème de la crème of clichés are going to be released upon us. Coaches and players don’t mess around when we reach this stage of a tournament, time then for World Cup Press Conference Bingo!

Seeing as we are getting to the business end of the Rugby World Cup, it's time to up the Gees a bit and really get behind our boys. As they say in the classics, when the going gets tough, the tough gets growing – beards! That’s right, let’s all show our support for the Boks by not shaving until their World Cup campaign is over!

This World Cup was never meant to be a complicated affair. The minnows were meant to arrive and provide contact practice, the northern hemisphere teams were meant to huff and puff and blow just about nothing down, and the Tri-Nations powerhouses were meant to dazzle the world and contest the final. But then Ireland ran onto Eden Park against the Aussies and cocked it all up – and isn’t it great that they did!