Well, the chasing pack finally made some inroads in to David Maune's lead after last weekend's tournaments, but there's no need for our Terenure manager to panic just yet - his week 16 lead might have been cut by £42,000, but he still has a very comfortable £122,943 cushion over his nearest challenger, Pat Corby.

Last week David's Cremorne 1 became the first team to pass the £2 million earning-mark, but of the six line-ups which broke that barrier this week only Colomba Gavigan's Over The Top earned less than our leader.

Five of Cremorne 1 were in action in week 17, but Des Smyth and Chris DiMarco missed the cut and Len Mattiace and Steve Pate won just over £15,000 between them. It was left to Retief Goosen to save the day, with the South African picking up a Golf Masters' cheque for £75,000, after sharing second place with David Carter at the European Grand Prix.

Goosen also provided the only bright spot in a near calamitous weekend for Colomba, last week's second placed-manager, for whom only four players turned up for duty - Tom Lehman could only tie for 35th at the Buick Classic, Des Smyth missed the cut at Slaley Hall, where Anthony Wall withdrew after the first round. Pat Corby's Blackbirds (two separate flocks of them) took full advantage of the top two's misfortunes with both earning just under £200,000 at the weekend. Goosen and Chris Perry (third at the Buick Classic), members of both line-ups, contributed the bulk of their teams' scores, moving Blackbirds 10 up to second and Blackbirds 7 up to third. You could have knocked us over with a Blackbird's feather at Golf Masters' HQ when our trusty computer produced the name of our weekly winner on Monday. Only last week we thanked Pat Doyle for his postcard from Paris, in which he asked us to ridicule his perennial under-achievers, the Carlow Scallion Eaters, so that he could claim another polo shirt.

So we did (called them "useless" and questioned his managerial skills), but now we fear we've ruined our hopes of an invitation to join Pat's fourball line-up in Mount Juliet, where he'll be heading soon, after his Josephine's Team won him his first weekly prize (after five years' trying).

Mind you, a feather would have been enough to knock Pat off his feet too when we rang him with the good news. "Absolutely thrilled, I can't believe it," he said (and neither could we). It would appear, though, that we're not the only ones who've jeopardised our chances of being selected for our Dublin-based (Knocklyon) Carlow manager's fourball. "I've taken some slagging the past few years," he told us, when we asked him about his team selection policy. "So, you'll remember who slagged you before you pick your team Pat," we asked him. "I will," he said, and we took that as the end of our hopes of a golfing day out in Mount Juliet. So, the small minority (three?) of Pat Doyle's friends who haven't slagged him the past few years over his managerial prowess can thank Goosen, Carter, Loren Roberts, Bob Estes and Stephen Leaney (all of whom had top 10 finishes at the weekend, to add to John McHenry and Mark Mouland's combined earnings of £14,571) for your golfing day out in Mount Juliet. (Hope it rains).

And Mount Juliet is precisely where Christopher Cuffe, of Shankill, Co Dublin, thought he'd be heading after his Crusaders won a mighty £428,500 last week . . . but it was only enough to put him joint fifth on the weekly leaderboard. "My dog has come over to me to put his head on my lap upon seeing my obvious distress after talking to the heartless man from the helpline (who told him he hadn't won a fourball)."

We will be sending Christopher a polo shirt, not because he missed out on a fourball, but because, in his email, he addressed us as "Golf Masters' executive organisers". Executive organisers? We liked that. We liked it so much we're going to use it in our CVs. Thank you Christopher - we'll be rooting for your Crusaders at this week's Irish Open and Western Open (remember, an Irish winner at the Irish Open wins £400,000).