So then, how was it for you? The group stage has come to a close, giving us a few days to mull over this natural point for reflection.
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And overall one has to say that it's been a great tournament. The opening round of games were mostly cagey affairs, as they generally are because nobody really wants to go for broke from the off. Five draws from the first six matches merely proved that the priority for most teams in their opening game is not to start their campaign with defeat.
But since then there has been no shortage of incident, and the final round surely exceeded expectations, with qualification going right down to the wire in every group. Even in Group C's otherwise dull finale, there was the bizarre tension around disciplinary records as both games headed for 0-0 draws.
What's more, even Ethiopia, who were statistically the tournament's worst team, brought plenty to the party - a huge, colourful following, who disgraced themselves by throwing vuvuzelas in their first game, but later apologised to CAF through a banner; an entertaining coach who at first described their behaviour as "normal", then corrected himself with a statement at his next press conference; the chaotic yet amusing sight of having a second goalkeeper sent off in three games, and finishing the tournament with a defender in a borrowed keeper's jersey; the emotional experience of holding the defending champions in their first game back.
It really was quite a way to return to the African Cup of Nations after a 31-year absence.
The state of Afcon right now is therefore rather healthy, aside from two issues - both of which have cropped up here in Nelspruit.
The first of them is the Mbombela pitch, on which local organisers dumped a heap of sand in the build-up to the tournament to counter torrential rain. An official told me that CAF actually stopped this process when they arrived in Nelspruit because their pitch expert felt the grass would recover without it, but by then it was too late.
Emmanuel Adebayor's comment in the mixed zone after Togo's 1-1 draw with Tunisia was that, "those people that watch the game in Europe, they will be sending SMS's to me tonight asking, 'Are you playing in the bush or what?' It's a disgrace to our continent, we can do better." Which is obviously fair.
The other problem has been that of refereeing, particularly when it has come to penalties. CAF are difficult to get a statement out of and would not confirm it officially when I looked into it, but the rumour is that Egyptian referee Ghead Grisha was sent home after his showing in the Nigeria-Burkina Faso clash. We certainly haven't seen him since.
And of course South African referee Daniel Bennett made a name for himself for all the wrong reasons on Wednesday, when he gave, in most opinions, the two softest penalties out of five or six appeals.
Tweeps cried, 'Match-fixing!' Yet the conspiracy theories didn't hold much weight given that Bennett waved play on after Vincent Bossou went through the back of Tunisia's Oussama Darragi. Adebayor was fairly graceful about it all afterwards, saying that the referee just had a bad day, and that is surely fair.
Nevertheless the standard of officiating on the continent is something that CAF needs to take a careful look at if it wants its showpiece tournament to appeal to the wider football family.
Miles Maponyera
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