The extremely well spoken English gent considerably over-shared, making a quite personal and startling disclosure that he suffered from an all to persistent case of piles.

It was a condition he attributed to the hours upon hours he had spent sitting on all forms of dubious seating watching in awe as the Don, over and over, went about destroying the speaker's beloved England.

You have to love Test cricket.

Twenty20, One Day Internationals, the Big Bash... you can throw them all in with the likes of The Block, The Bachelor and Australia's Got Talent. There is nothing like a five day cricket Test.

In particular there is nothing like a five day Test which ends with us packing the Ashes in with our carry-on luggage.

Tampering karma would appear to work in mysterious ways.

Steve Smith is suddenly smelling distinctly rosey, applauded even by his previous hecklers.

David Warner, on the other hand, has now had three ducks in a row and is finding his head being called for.

As far as form goes Warner's is pretty dire, but, still, it is perhaps worth keeping in mind that the great Greg Chappell once clocked up seven ducks in a row. Seven consecutive no scores...

However, Chappell and Warner's duck figures pale into insignificance when you take into account the true masters of the scoreless exit from the crease.

Courtney Ambrose holds the Test record with 43 quackers. Next best is New Zealand's Chris Martin with 36; and then the bronze goes to our own Glenn McGrath with 35.

So, St George Illawarra have hired Gus Gould to conduct a review of their disastrous season.

There's no doubting Gould's football brain, and so the club's hiring of such expertise would seem to make quite a bit of sense. But Gould and St George? It strikes you as an unlikely combination.

But then again, maybe not.

Gould played 104 first-grade games in his footballing career for four different clubs - Penrith, Newtown, Canterbury and South Sydney.

He went on to coach Canterbury, Penrith and the Roosters.

This is not somebody who you identify with any one particular club. So a job advising the Dragons? Why not?

Mal Meninga, meanwhile, one of the most prominent Raiders of all time, is now juggling his Kangaroo coaching duties with being on the payroll of the Gold Coast Titans - this year's wooden spooners.

Again, I suppose, in the modern era, why not?

It's in marked contrast to an interview I read this week with Newcastle's Robbie O'Davis.

O'Davis was describing how he'd received plenty of lucrative offers from other clubs during his tenure with the Knights but that he, "just couldn't imagine wearing another colour jersey".

At the very end of his career, with no real offers on the table O'Davis received a call from Russell Crowe with an invitation on behalf of South Sydney.

O'Davis recalled having to say: "It sounds great and would set me up for life, but I just couldn't run onto Marathon Stadium wearing a different colour. I just couldn't do it.

"I just didn't want to play against Newcastle."

Alan McNab asked me over drinks recently: "Would you have ever played against Maitland?"

"No," I answered.

Why? I'd have to say for the same reasons as stated above by Robbie O.

This attitude used to be the norm. In some ways you can look at the period of Phil Gould's playing career as being the beginning of the era of transition.

So now we all just support a club, don't worry too much about the revolving faces and tolerate the horse-trading nature of the players moving from one club to another.

And what that leaves us with is a fairly shallow form of support where "winning is the only thing".

St George, the Titans, Newcastle and whoever else did no good this season are all looking at various "rebuilding" strategies.

Nobody seems to be accepting the blunt truth - that somebody has to lose! It's inescapable. You have to take your turn.

Football is cyclical in nature. Teams rise, dominate, are usurped, fall, regather and then go again.

St George once won 11 premierships on the trot. This year they were second last. That's how things roll, and that's how it should be.

Now when you lose it's seen as the end of the world and, generally, the ensuing approach is to find the enticements and money to spend on poaching players and/or coaches from last season's winners.

It's all a bit cheap I think. The true test, and the most rewarding in the long run, is avidly supporting a losing team. The potential pay-off is so much greater.

Imagine the joy of the lifelong South Sydney supporters as the Bunnies came through to win the 2014 premiership after a 43 year drought.