It was a platform from which he could casually, but significantly, point to the places he was born and raised, following the High Court ruling that disqualified him from government on the basis that he was not exclusively an Australian citizen.

It is a decision that snuffed out the Coalition’s majority, impacting massively on their ability to drive policy through both houses, and threw the good people of New England into a largely unwanted by-election.

“You take the hits and the sacrifices. We all buy the ticket, we know the risks," he said.

However, the subsequent announcement that Tony Windsor would not be contesting the by-election provided a rather softer political landing for the beleaguered Mr Joyce than he might have expected.

Their last political encounter was a bloody battle, and a fired up Mr Windsor and the spectre of character-damning innuendo hovering around Mr Joyce was setting the scene for a brutal clash on the hustings this time around.

While Mr Joyce will no doubt say he never feared a contest with his arch rival, one could be forgiven for imagining him having an enormous sigh of relief.

My Joyce’s potential agony may be diminished by what should now be a reasonably smooth return to government, but the pressure on the coalition builds enormously.

What is not clear is the retrospective ramifications of Mr Joyce’s “ineligible vote”.

This is uncharted territory, and as Labor’s Tanya Plibersek has noted, votes to defend penalty rates and allow a banking Royal Commission were lost by just a single vote.

Circumstances such as this can only throw an already rattled Turnbull government into deeper chaos.

Mr Joyce may attempt to shrug off this state of affairs as part of the rough and tumble of the political life, but he might find it harder to look his political allies in the eye as they try to correct a ship he has overturned through a clumsy failure to get his own house in order.

Mr Joyce likes to use football analogies. Well, in this case he has taken his eye off the ball, dropped it and fumbled while trying to regather, and its costing the taxpayer an expensive by-election to fund his political rejuvenation.

An apology might be in order.