Reading the rules

It's easy to find good online bingo sites with top prizes these days.

But apparently it isn't easy to find out the rules of the competition your football team play in.

South Africa, hosts of the last World Cup, were knocked out of the Africa Cup of Nations last night – they failed to make it through their qualifying group.

There was confusion here as SA would have topped the group on goal difference – except that method wasn't being used to separate teams with tied points.

They didn't know that though and played for a point on the last day which they thought would be enough.

Tottenham's South African player Steven Pienaar, even tweeted his delight that his country were through, until he realised his mistake – teams on the same points would be split by the head to head method.

Under this process, the little known Niger qualified instead – a bit of an embarrassment for the Bafana Bafana.

Now, it seems like South Africa are appealing this decision, which seems absolutely ridiculous.

Surely, they don't have a leg to stand on? They knew the rules before they started playing (well at least they should have). They also would not have complained if they went through in the same fashion and should a footballing nation of their calibre really be failing to beat teams like Niger?

So instead of looking for others to blame, SA needs to have a sit down, begin the inquest and move on to the future.

Oh, and a quick scan of the rules next time might not hurt either.