Letters to my sons.

Dear Son,

luckily your bed time is just before 8pm which meant you missed the horror show that the BBC showed live on Wednesday night. I am thinking of writing to OFCOM to complain of the sickening images broadcast before the 9pm water shed.

I have seen England play badly in my time but this must be the worst ever – even worse than England vs Scotland at Wembley for the Euro 2000 play off. A match I watched perched right on the back row at Wembley its self.

England only needed to draw to qualify for Euro 2008 in Switzerland and Austria next year but that is not the full story. After England lost to Russia, England’s destiny was not in their own hands. They needed Israel to beat Russia – which last Saturday they did. Israel went one-nil up, Russia equalised and then in stoppage time, right at the end of the match Israel went and scored the winner. If Russia had won that match they would have been all but out.

Not only did the England team have the life line given to them by Israel but Macedonia managed to beat Croatia 2-nil meaning that if England could win their final game against Croatia 2-nil they would top the group and increase their ranking ahead of the World Cup group stage draw and the groups for the Euro 2008 tournement.

The England teams response to this let-off was to play like a pub team. After an all night bender. It was terrible to watch and within 14 minutes England were 2-nil down. Changes were made at half time but the main underachievers – Lampard and Gerrard – stayed on the pitch. Beckham came on and did a wonderful job with his pin-point accuracy of passing. Within a few minutes a penalty was won and converted by Lampard. Not long after wards a superb Beckham pass found Peter Crouch and the bean pole smashed it into the Croatian net. 2 all and England are now safe – they just have to stop Croatia scoring again.

So what do the overpaid “professionals” do? Stand off and allow the opposition to attack. Which is what they did and the Croatian’s scored – a well taken goal and well deserved as well.

Where was the spirit, the attacking, the “never say die” spirit? I think it exists in inverse proportion to the amount the players are paid.

So next summer we can look forward to mild interest in the Euro 2008 tournament. Who knows, via your mothers friend me might even be able to get tickets for a France game and make a weekend of it.

And the garden needs doing. I hate gardening …