I think I may have admitted in an earlier post that I am not much of a football fan. I say this and back it up evidentially with my own admittance to following the plight of East Stirlingshire FC, which in years gone by, resulted in me standing in the freezing cold and rain, eating too many pies and drinking too much Bovril whilst my “team” got gubbed again. The only shining light was and still is that it is only a matter of time before Sir Alex Ferguson retires from Manchester United and takes up the challenge of managing East Stirling because he was there before.
To make it real and the same as it was for him at Manchester United, all he need do is remove four zeros from all monetary figures which passed over his desk when he was at Man Utd. Rooney is on £150,000 a week and his counter part at East Stirling is on £15. It’s a challenge fit for a legend to go out with having managed East Stirlingshire to the top of the Scottish Premiere League and have them win the Champions League by beating Barcelona 4-1 in the final. You may scoff but stranger things have happened although I can’t think of one right at this moment.
Anyway, England played France last evening and it ended up a one all draw. This, of course, is enough for the commentators and pundits to now claim that England could well go on to win the competition. They might do. It seems unlikely but they just might. (See fantasy already covered in the first two paragraphs above).
What happened was that England scored first and then they closed the game down. The French scored an equaliser and then spent far too much time kicking the ball to each other in nice wee patterns rather than do anything exciting like scoring a another goal. At the end of the game Grandad Hodgson suggested that England had done good. They had drawn with France who had not been beaten for 21 games before tonight’s game. He was probably a wee bit tired and emotional after the game and failed to notice that France had now extended their run to 22 games. No matter. Well apart from the referee being biased towards the French according to, yes you guessed it correctly, the English commentators.
I was speaking to a chap I know during the first half. He had, had a call from his Father, who is English, the previous evening who was complaining about the commentators repeatedly talking about England and English players or foreign players who play in the Premier League rather than talking about the actual game that they were commentating on. He was also complaining about how jingoistic the commentators were and how bad this makes England look. He’s right of course. They mention 1966 a LOT, but probably not as often as we Scots mention beating the English at Bannockburn, buts that’s just for a laugh really. Talking of which…
The real reason for this post was what happened at half time. No not at the football that was duller than a very dull thing. No a splendid thing happened. IRN Bru decided to place an ad during the half-time slot of the France v England game. If you haven’t already seen it give this a go.
I’d imagine that all the generic Mrs Whitehouse’s will have already complained and the Daily Mail will be apoplectic. There are two saving graces for the ad. One it was genuinely funny and two it contained more entertainment in 41 seconds than the whole of the France England game and all the wittering before during and afterwards!
More power to the Leith Agency who put the ad together!
Tedious Tantrums 