Choices. We all make them. Some are simple, like: Tooheys or VB? (Correct answer: Neither.) Some are harder, like: Miranda Kerr or Megan Fox? (Correct answer: Both.)
But some choices are deliberately made to cause trouble.
Make no mistake. The AFL and NRL are deliberately setting out to end Australia's World Cup hosting bid. Right here, right now, before it's even really begun.
How do I know this? Because I can hear them talking.
On talkback, on TV, in the press, online. Everywhere.
This isn't the old joke about how can you tell when Ben Cousins/Greg Bird/Cockney/Scot/etc is lying ("his lips are moving...")
I genuinely know they are trying to derail the bid because I can genuinely hear them talking. They have chosen to speak out and be heard, by the world. And by FIFA.
If they really wanted to help bring the World Cup to Australia, we wouldn't hear a peep out of them.
If they had any concerns about match fixtures, stadium availability, expenditure, it can all be settled in gentleman's fashion - in a sporting manner - with a phone call, over lunch, or for tricky problems, at a meeting hosted by the Government in Canberra.
There are already regular meetings and briefings from the bid team that have kept them all fully involved and informed up to now.
Instead they are having a whiny cry to anyone that will listen.
And not just anonymously either, with "a source said" here and there - which they would use if they wre trying to shoehorn out concessions and compo - or through former players...but the people at the very top are going on the record to publicly wreck our hopes of hosting in 2018 or 2022.
They might start by saying they are, of course, all in favour of Australia hosting an event like the World Cup - but that's invariably followed by a bigger "...but..." than Beyonce's.
Here we are EIGHT YEARS away, at least, from a World Cup in Australia and both the AFL and NRL have gone ballistic, with outrageous scare stories that aren't even based on any kind of truth, but deliberately designed to inflame their fans, create headlines - and isolate football.
They have resurrected the era of Us against Them and it's shameful and pathetic.
And despite what the FFA says, it does seriously dent our hopes of winning the bid.
The story IS being picked up around the world (here , here, here and here, just to link to a mere few) - no-one else is running into this kind of issue. As far as I can remember no-one else ever has. Journalists are amazed, football fans are shocked.
Other sports trying to stop a World Cup happening in their country? It is quite simply unthinkable ANYWHERE else in the world. This is such a prized event, no-one else would dream of getting in its way. You work around it and embrace it - simple.
England's bid appeared to be going off the rails last month when splintered factions within the bid team pulled in different directions, but that was minor compared to this.
We are now the bid pulling up lame after looking like a favourite just a few weeks ago.
Whether the rivals' complaints are genuine or not is irrelevant - it creates bad headlines, it appears to show division - and quite simply, why would FIFA take the World Cup somewhere it's not wanted by a huge section of the population?
There are seven other bids to choose from...why risk the hassle?
The FFA have the whole country's football family - old and new - on message, government included, and a nation that is practised - and REVELS - in hosting landmark spectaculars...but we still can't bring onside the neanderthals in the other codes.
There are at least eight years to sort out any real issues. Eight years to demand compensation or concessionary privileges or find alternatives if any actually do need to be found.
However so far there has yet to be a genuine issue raised, just scaremongering based on blatant lies. The MCG, for example, will not need to be shut down nor the AFL cancel their season.
The AFL reached that by randomly adding four weeks to the mandatory two months off-limits "...to allow for signage to be put up", plus another four weeks "...for the seating to be re-arranged."
But both of those can be done in the first of its two months on World Cup duty. Signage, I'm pretty sure, is regularly put up in a day or two at most stadiums...
From that, the AFL then whipped itself into a rabid frenzy and claimed, if the shutdown, froth, was to last 16 weeks, foam, the WHOLE season would have to be shutdown. Seizure.
If it wasn't so serious, you'd tell them to go to bed without their supper and only come down when they can talk like grown-ups.
But they're not being childish. They're being deadly serious.
They are going all out to ensure our World Cup bid is stillborn, wasting millions of taxpayer dollars by their petty insecurity and protectionism - and destroying the opportunity of a once in a lifetime event for the nation.
If the AFL and NRL truly want the World Cup to come to Australia, let's hear them say they have some concerns but they will sort them out in the many years to come - and then hear nothing more from them again publicly.
Simon Hill said last year that we could now smell their fear.
Today it's different.
With the World Cup bid, they now feel our breath on their neck.
And right now, they fear a dagger being plunged into their heart - and are screaming blue murder while we tussle.
Let's just hope FIFA doesn't hear them and run away.
