What would we do without Association Football?....I mean of course soccer. I could have said simply ‘football’, but Gaelic football players and supporters quite rightly object to that use of the term. After all, they are by a very long chalk the most popular football game in Ireland, so to refer to a minority football game like soccer as ‘football’ is a bit like declaring the hop-step-and-jump competition to be the definitive event in athletics…Where was I? Oh right – soccer. It’s big at the moment and it’ll become increasingly huge between now and the World Cup, one hundred days hence. Last night the Republic of Ireland played Brazil and did OK in holding them to a 2-0 win. Trappatoni may not be a flair manager but he does produce teams that have backbone. Tonight England will face Egypt and a lot of us – including unionists – will be wishing our next-door neighbours could both lose and win at the same time. Lose, so we could all have a good laugh at the deflation of over-inflated England prospects; win, so we could have the prospect of seeing them go to the World Cup and crash on a grander, world stage. Remember Gazza’s tears? Just imagine if the whole England team were to be defeated by, say, the US, and twenty-two English eyes were to stop smiling and start exuding moisture simultaneously. Yes, you're quite right - I am a rotten sport.
And John Terry – should the crowd boo him tonight? I do hope so. Not because he had it off with the ex-girl-friend of an ex-team-mate (how far removed can you get?) but because it may unsettle him and add to the jitteriness at the back for England in future games. It’ll also show how stupid England supporters can be. Terry is rich and famous for his ability to kick and head a football, which he does very well, and for which he not surprisingly is applauded. What he gets up to off the field is entirely his own business, just as my brain-surgeon’s sexual life is no concern of mine while his surgery skills are.
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