For the first time, the World Cup finals will be held in Africa and the continent will have six representatives at this year’s tournament. South Africa are hosts and are also the lowest-ranked team taking part in this year’s competition. They didn’t enter the first seven tournaments and were banned from competing until 1994. They qualified for the 1998 and 2002 finals, but only won one of their six games on those occasions. Previously, all host nations have made it past the first round at least, but South Africa have their work cut out for them in what is a very tough group to call. However, it’s unlikely that they’ll get too many points off France, Mexico or Uruguay and may take some consolation in the fact that they won’t have too far to travel to get home

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It’s already the start of June and that means that the 19th football World Cup is about to begin. I remember being first taken by the sport when I watched the 1982 tournament in Spain on a black & white Ferguson television set. The game between Italy and Brazil is still one of the most exciting games I’ve ever seen and each of the subsequent six competitions brings back many memories. In Mexico ’86, it was Maradona’s goals against England. I have fond recollections of happy days in packed pubs spent watching Ireland’s debut at Italia ’90 that reached its zenith with Packie’s Bonner’s penalty save and Dave O’Leary’s winning spot-kick in the game against Romania. We got knocked out by the hosts in the quarter-final, but got our revenge four years later with a Ray Houghton goal against Italy at USA ’94. France ’98 was notable for the host’s win against holder’s Brazil in the final

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