Gosh, wasn’t it unbearable?! Ooohhh, the tension. Will they get to the end? Will they finish the job? Can England’s finest go the distance in France? In the end neither Peter Crouch or Ian Wright did manage to string together a coherent sentence between them but by jingo did they try. Last night was depressing for lots of reasons and the fact we drew against Russia wasn’t one of them. Of course we were going to stumble; we always do when we go a goal up but still have plenty of time left to fuck things up. All football commentary is dull, lifeless, drifting cobblers and punditry is no better. Leaving ITV to pick over the bones of a mild disaster ended up being another mild disaster. Just as ITV football makes BBC coverage look slightly professional so Wright and Crouch managed to make Lee Dixon sound like Gandalf. Or Stephen Fry on coke. They waffled on in circles, repeating the same old crap and when the presenter asked them to close their eyes and rummage around in the cliché sack and pull out another it just turned out to be the last one but with the words slightly re-ordered.
What came across, from what I could tell through the mist of bafflement, is that England were robbed (of course, we’re always robbed) and deserved to win. I would like to contest that assertion. If we had scored one more goal or conceded one fewer then, absolutely we would have deserved to win. But we didn’t do either of those things. We didn’t deserve anything except the thing we got and since we’ve seen it all before there really isn’t much point wasting time being disappointed. Of course it was very unfair that Russia were allowed to have a really keen goalkeeper. Bastards. And it was really unfair that Vardy wasn’t allowed to come out to play. Perhaps he hadn’t finished his homework. It was also mildly unsporting of Harry Kane (not the sharpest) to bully his way into taking every corner kick. That must be the best role for a tall person, not drifting around somewhere pointless like in front of the fucking goal. Perhaps the greatest injustice was that at the very end of the match the ball suddenly decided to follow all the usual rules of propulsion and motion and gravity and reacted to someone pointing it towards the England goal by actually going INTO the England goal. That’s who’s to blame! Not the Russians. The ball and the laws of physics. What a pair of sneaky fuckers.
Ah well, what can you do? Let’s limp on and see what happens against Wales and then probably (or not) crawl through to the knock out stages and then promptly show the rest of Europe what a knock out means by being knocked very much out. Wayne Rooney depresses me also. It says a great deal about our nation that this knuckle dragging, hammer-headed cock is now seen as some sort of national treasure or elder statesman. Like Gandalf. Or Stephen Fry on coke.
Let’s finish with a word on the violence. Where did that come from??? You would have thought that the recent Hillsborough news plus all the terrorist shit in France would have put everyone off kicking lumps out of each other. But oh no, lets all open the cupboard and delve into the past. What shall I wear today? Fred Perry polo shirt? Check. Burberry cap? Check. Sunburn? Check. Stanley knife? Check. But honestly monsieur we were provoked by those nasty Russians. He made me engage in a chair fight. A fight I had to enter to defend my honour, my good name, my proud race and my great nation. Solution? The usual I guess: anyone who wants to fight instead of watch football can be locked in a warehouse until the last man’s standing. Then he can just hit himself over the head with a chair until he passes out. Which must have happened a lot to Harry Kane when he was growing up.
G B Hewitt. 12.6.2016
Glenn Hoddle could do with being put to sleep as well.
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 