Great time, shame about the football.

Well, that was a final which won't linger long in the memory.

Three days on and most of us are seeking to forget what happened in Soccer City on Sunday night.
Spain against Holland was a simply horrible exhibition, proof that if one team sets out to destroy, even the best find it hard to elevate proceedings.
What the Dutch gave us what not so much total football as non football.
The thuggery of Mark van Bommel and Nigel de Jong was a vicious slap in the face of those who gave us the glorious orange.
No wonder Johan Cruyff sought to distance himself from it. And - never mind his nationality - to blame the referee was the sort of pitiful straw clutching in which the British press generally engage.
It was the final that summed up the tournament: the worst World Cup in living memory.
Ghana against Uruguay apart, how many memorable games were there, games which propelled you to the edge of your seat, games that made you gasp with their drama and rhythm?
Andres Iniesta and Xavi apart, this was a tournament in which the superstars of the game failed to show, a tournament in which - the Germans an honourable exception - innovation, imagination and enterprise were forgotten in the pursuit of results.
When the history of South Africa 2010 comes to be written what will be its principle gift to posterity? A dodgy beach ball and a mono-tonal trumpet. It is not exactly Mexico 1970.
Yet, for anyone who made it to South Africa, there will have been evidence, away from the pitch, of a tournament that enriched an entire nation, elevated it from the sink of problems into which it was reversing, gave it, albeit for just a month, a singularity of purpose that was a joy to witness.
White, black, young, old, rich, poor: for four weeks they were all united as South Africans.
As one Johannesburg resident told me, it was Mandela's vision of what the country might become writ large. What a joy it was to see the old man himself actually there in person at the final.
This is the power that Fifa has in its gift, the ability to make a real difference to a nation's sense of itself.
This is something that the World Cup can deliver in a way no other event - not even the Olympic Games, certainly not the Champions League - can deliver.
Mind, it is a power which they seem intent on squandering.
Everything they did at the tournament seemed designed to undermine the spirit of the occasion: the heavy-handed copyright policing, the $2billion - tax free - drained from the local economy, the incompetent ticketing arrangements which meant the local organisers were filling the seats with volunteers at the game between Germany and England in case the cameras spotted the gaps in the stands (a game between England and Germany and somehow Fifa managed not to get the tickets into the hands of those who would have killed for them: how hopeless is that?).
What was great about being in South Africa this past few weeks was nothing to do with Fifa. It was the glory of the place, the loveliness of the locals and the wonder of the landscape. And the sheer pleasure they took from welcoming the world.
There could not have been a better venue for the world's party. The shame is that, as party planners, Fifa would put a dampener on an Irish wake.
As for the football... well the less said about that the better.

Though here, through little more than a nod at tradition, is my team of the tournament. And it is no real surprise that only four nations are represented:
Goalkeeper: Iker Casillas (Spain)
Defenders: Philipp Lahm (Germany); Carles Puyol (Spain); Diego Lugano (Uruguay); Fabio Coentrao (Portugal)
Midfielders: Mesut Ozil (Germany); Xavi (Spain); Andres Iniesta (Spain)
Forwards: Thomas Mueller (Germany); Diego Forlan (Uruguay); David Villa (Spain)