Gazing at my crystal ball

1. The Stormers will win the Super 14. That is the local pre-season tourney for the top 14 clubs in the Province/Boland area.

2. Rassie will dictate on field moves via strobe lights from the top of Table Mountain.

3. The Bulls machine will rumble on. Cheeky sub-eds everywhere will fall over themselves to write “white line fever” headlines everytime Pedrie Wannenburg gets over the line.

4. The Sharks will reach unprecedented levels of choking when 12-0 up at halftime, the whole team refuses to leave the change rooms for the second half of a home semifinal. Ruan Pienaar will be found sobbing in a corner whimpering “the crowds gaze is so heavy”.

5. Jacques Kallis will be the subject of a bitter bidding war between The Hair Loss Clinic and Weight Watchers. Fat balding men all over the country will cheer.

6. Makhaya Ntini will be recalled into the Test team and set a record for the longest unbroken on-field smile.

7. Graeme Smith will finally perfect his serious tough guy stare, much to the amusement of Rahul Dravid, Ricky Ponting and Merv Hughes across the Indian Ocean.

8. In an attempt to shore up the Bok scrum, coach Peter de Villiers will call up the by then 110kg Benni McCarthy to the side. Two days later, Benni and Ricky Januarie will go AWOL from camp only to be found downing Zamalek’s in Manenberg.

9. The Peter de Villiers sex tape will finally emerge. Only for the whole country to wish it actually hadn’t.

10. SA Rugby to suffer yet another PR crisis as Bryan Habana confesses his love for Eastern European strippers and that he only moved to Cape Town for the model nookie. Gillette to drop it’s “clean cut black athlete with a white wife” endorsement policy.

11. Bafana Bafana will score a goal after a shanked shot from Terror-less Fantemi deflects off a teammate 5 yards behind him and bounces back in off a low flying seagull at the Moses Mabhida stadium. Safa will celebrate the event by awarding coach Parreira a R200 000 bonus for tactical mastery.

12. A UK tourist will get mugged while wandering drunk through Hillbrow after a Ghana game at Ellis Park. The UK papers to soberly report the matter as “nothing but a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time”.

13. Someone, somewhere will actually go watch a local domestic cricket match. And pay their way.

14. Bhutana Komphela will agitate for Shaun Pollock’s recall to the national team on the grounds that the team lacks “ginger representivity”.

15. Bryan Habana will score a hat-trick against the Bulls. Video replays will show that the “intercepts” were actually beautifully floated skip passes from a Meisiekind flummoxed by a stirring rendition of “gee die bal vir Bryan” from the Newlands faithful (hopeful?)

16. The Cheetahs will overachieve again. And yet the big money sponsorships will stay away.

17. Merv Hughes to be finally declared a fourth province of Australia.

18. Naas will realise that all he actually has on “the other hand” are four fingers and a thumb.

19. Morne Steyn to land a monster penalty at Kings Park. From Loftus.

20. WW3 to be set off when Frans Steyn (in retaliation to the above) knocks out a US military satellite that lands on Beijing.