We’re on the verge of our first World Cup triumph since 1987, and it looks as if the only thing standing in our way is a suspect-looking French team. Sure, 1999 and 2007 and all that, but the current lot don’t look to have the firepower to stun us as those two French teams did.

So it’s ours for the taking. Or at least it was.

Newsflash: The world will end on Friday night.

This shocking prediction comes from US Christian broadcaster Harold Camping, the same man who said the world would end on May 21 – and also on September 6, 1994.

Dammit, God! You couldn’t have waited until Monday morning? Why do you hate the All Blacks so much?

And since I’m at it, what’s with all the earthquakes, mining disasters and environmental catastrophes?

The people who pay your wages expect an occasional bit of effort from you. But instead you allow one nightmare after another to descend upon the people of this country.

And when I say “nightmare”, yes I am including your decision to shift Coro to a 5.30pm timeslot. What way is that to treat the oldies who are eating their rest home dinners at that time?

Listen, if you can manage to part the Red Sea then I’m pretty sure you can stop a shitty little container ship from hitting a marked reef. A marked reef, for chrissake!

If I was your boss I’d have fired you long ago.

So listen up. You can do whatever you want next week. You’re God, after all, which means you’re fairly omnipotent. But you don’t want to piss me off this week, because we need to win this game.

Tell your mate Harold Camping to wait till Monday. No, make that Tuesday. Monday’s a holiday, and I don’t want my day off ruined by a whole bunch of cataclysms and tsunamis.

Go on, tell Camping there’s been another delay. He’s used to them by now. If he gets pissed at you then just say you had trouble organising the volcanoes to blow at the same time. It’s a tricky business, all that volcanoey stuff.

Anyway, I expect you’ll do whatever you want, just like always. But if you do this thing on Friday you’re going to have a lot of irate people to deal with. Including me.

PS Should France be comfortably ahead moments before the final whistle, then that would be an okay time to push the big red button.