Crunching the numbers is taking a little time, and I'm not entirely sure how to value the team, to be honest. But by the end of today (with the help of your contributions, welcome as ever), I'm hoping to have a proposal ready to go, marked for the attention of the Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment. After all, if the al-Nayhan royal family will shell out £200-million for Manchester City, surely the Pinelands Mighty Dodos would a fantastic supplementary buy?

The Dodos, for the philistines amongst you unacquainted with one of sport's most high-profile brands, are my all-star hockey outfit, a celebrity crowd of finely-tuned athletes, playing out of the rise and fall of the Pinelands International Hockey Arena, frequently in front of crowds numbering almost half a dozen. Big Lurker, The Wall, Petal Le Grange, Peela — names that roll off the tongue of sports fans everywhere. Or at least in several (rather small) parts of Cape Town.

And with promotion at the end of last season to the heady heights of M4, a top four finish on the cards for this year, and a boisterous tour of Eshowe scheduled for a few weeks' time — not unlike Premiership tours to the Far East; taking the Dodos brand to rural KwaZulu-Natal is a stroke of marketing genius — the time is surely right for a major commercial buy-in. Roman Abramovich, I have it on good authority, deliberated for an age before settling on Chelsea over the Dodos; this Abu Dhabi crowd, if the outrageous snatching of Robinho is anything to go by, could quite easily afford both City and the Dodos.

It's been an extraordinary couple of days in English football. Manchester United eventually coughed up a club record for Berbatov the Bulgarian, Sir Alex keenly aware of the attacking edge missing at Old Trafford, but what would normally have been the week's lead story, instead took a distant second to the latest Middle Eastern luxury purchase. The V&A Waterfront, Turnberry, now Manchester City — there's a global buying spree underway, and unlimited cash to fuel it.

Which brings me back to the Dodos, and a fine commercial opportunity. Where City offers a football team, a bit of television coverage, and a couple of replica shirts, the pride of Pinelands is so much more. The lush, if slightly muddy and not entirely flat playing surface, offers multiple uses: midweek caravan park, rock concert venue (I can picture U2 there already), military testing site. The clubhouse — a fetching blend of 1950s Moscow, and Birmingham council house — is just waiting for celebrity launches, black tie cocktail parties, and the Pinelands Old Aged Home bingo evenings. Throw in a braai area, ample parking (there's always enough room for the Dodos' supporters), and close proximity to a BP garage that sells pies at three in the morning after an extended practice session, and the allure of the deal takes shape.

It's the athletes who'll seal the deal, though, and this is where the lads from Abu Dhabi will surely find the Dodos an irresistible purchase. Spending £32-million on Robinho is one thing; coughing up 12 cases of Black Label quarts, a signed poster of Tracy McGregor in her underwear, and a year's subscription to Loslyf, to bring Mike Dabrowski from the Wanderers to the Dodos two years ago (still a record transfer fee for the Flightless Ones), is something else entirely.

And should we bring back Andrew Stone (currently on loan to a club in Rwanda), the man who famously scored a hat-trick by trying to get out of the way of balls, and inadvertently deflecting them past a bemused 'keeper instead, lure Big Lurker Fleming home from America, and convince Petal Le Grange's mum to let him play in games without the woollen protective bodysuit she made for him, the Dodos will be hot property indeed. £200-million for Manchester City? I'll take £20-million for the Dodos, the sports bargain of the year. And a case of Black Label quarts.

  • I haven't been sleeping well of late, and so I've agreed to have dinner with HO De Villiers and a couple of his mates on Friday night; HO will spend the evening telling me all about his rugby career, and if that doesn't cure my insomnia, nothing will. It means I'll miss the live broadcast of Bob Skinstad's new show, 'LuvSport', under the mercurial direction of Seth Rotherham, the man behind the wildly successful 2Oceansvibe website. PVR will be employed to catch it as soon as I'm home: a sports variety talk show, I'm reliably informed it will feature wrestling midgets, lawnmower racing, and Bob nude. 9pm this Friday on SuperSport 1 — I'll be watching with intent.

  • Contact Dan at dan@metropolis.co.za

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