The following article appeared in the programme for Racing Club Warwick v Malvern Town on 12th November 2005.
Saturday 8th October and the Racing Club fixture is up against the competing delights of the England v. Austria World Cup Qualifier at Old Trafford. Regular readers of this column will have seen previous rants from me against such fixture scheduling. Given that the dates of all remaining World Cup Qualifiers were known in 2004, well before fixture lists were being drawn up for the current season, the FA could have scheduled a blank Saturday leaving clubs with the option of pulling forward a fixture if they wanted to. Adding an extra Saturday’s fixtures on at the end of the season for clubs at this level would surely not have represented much of a problem albeit that some players would have required payment for one more week. Not too much to ask surely!
Anyway, as a dedicated England fan, I forsook the Midland Alliance for one week to sample some international football. The first problem was that of negotiating the M6. Despite setting off at 10:45, the traffic was dreadful due to some bright spark deciding to allow a wide load to use this Saturday morning to head northwards. This led to queues alleged to have been somewhere between twenty and thirty miles long. Frustrating? You bet! Luckily this was a 4PM kick-off and eventually I managed to leave the M6 at junction 17 and enjoyed a traffic-free country scenic tour via Cheadle and Knutsford to Altrincham and the Metrolink. The Metrolink represents a much cheaper option than attempting to park anywhere near the stadium and allows you to get away pretty quickly afterwards. I finally arrived at the ground at 3:30 but it really shouldn’t take nearly five hours to do the 110 miles from Warwick to Trafford Park should it?
The match itself was panned by the gentlemen of the press. Whilst it was admittedly not a scintillating display by the England superstars, the match was tight and absorbing throughout. England, you will recall, secured a fortuitous penalty after 25 minutes which was dispatched by Frank Lampard but, try as they might, no further goals were forthcoming and Austria did, at one stage, hit the bar. David Beckham also suffered harshly at the hands of the Spanish referee and became the first England player ever to have been sent off twice. Much of the talk afterwards was of Liverpool’s Peter Crouch. Clearly he is not many people’s favourite and, more significantly, he came into this game without much form, certainly not in the scoring stakes. His height seems to make him a magnet for many people’s criticism. That said, whether the critics like it or not, he seems to make things happen and most of England’s chances revolved around the man resembling a lamp-post! My view? Well he certainly wouldn’t be in my first choice England team but he’s surely worth a place on the bench as an attacking option if things need freshening up. I certainly wouldn’t boo him as was the case the following Wednesday night when he came on for Shaun Wright-Phillips – what kind of supporter does that? Make no mistake, the boos were for Crouch and weren’t for Sven’s decision to haul SWP off as was suggested by many the following day.
Anyway 1-0 was the result and that same night England’s berth to the World Cup Finals in Germany was secured courtesy of Holland’s result against the Czech Republic. England’s World Cup Qualifying match against Poland the following week was therefore to be a formality but it would be interesting nevertheless to see whether England could top the group and perhaps improve their chances of getting a seeding as a result. If anything, my journey to Old Trafford on the Wednesday was even worse than the previous Saturday! I left my workplace in Wolverhampton at 3:30PM for the 7:45 kick off. Remember that Wolverhampton is some 40 miles closer to Manchester than Warwick and, with only 70 miles to traverse, I would not have expected to be taking my seat as the teams were kicking off. If this is the joy of going to Old Trafford you can keep it! I’ll stick to the short journey to Hampton Road thank you very much.
The Poland game was a much better performance by all concerned. Without Beckham and Gerrard, Sven was forced to reshape the midfield and the resultant shape seemed to be much more effective. The midfield four comprised Shaun Wright-Phillips on the left in Beckham’s normal position, Joe Cole on the right, Ledley King playing almost as a sweeper allowing Frank Lampard a fairly free role. Certainly Tottenham’s Ledley King produced an excellent performance and was my personal man-of-the-match ahead of Wayne Rooney who also had a good game. Michael Owen scored an opportunist first after 43 minutes but this was promptly cancelled out before half-time by Polish substitute Frankowski (and there was me thinking that Mr Sheen was the only polish substitute!). Throughout the second half England gave a good account of themselves and, despite the boo-boys, England’s winning goal came from that man Lampard late on at least partly down to Peter Crouch’s height worrying the life out of the Polish defenders.
So not only had England qualified for Germany 2006, they had won their group to boot! No doubt the newspaper hacks will somehow manager to turn this into a doom and gloom scenario but, for me, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic despite the recent defeats against Denmark and, worst of all, Northern Ireland. It’s not that long ago, about six months to be precise, that the press were portraying England as potential World Cup winners, second only to Brazil in the list of favourites. So what changed? Are the players different? Make no mistake, by the time next summer rolls around the hacks will have either managed to provide England with their traditional siege mentally due to over-the–top criticism or we will be heading off to Deutschland on a tidal wave of over-hyped optimism. Why can’t we be one of the pack when it comes to expectations? We should get to the Quarter-Finals if our FIFA ranking is to be believed with anything beyond that being a bonus. That level of realism wouldn’t go amiss now would it you gentlemen of the press?
And for those of you that wonder why this article is titled the way it is, I can now cross my fingers and prey that one of the two World Cup matches that I have managed to secure tickets for will feature our Three Lions heroes. Hamburg or Dortmund, I don’t really mind Mr Blatter! For now, let’s get back to my regular Midland Football Alliance fare. Come on you Racers!
Keep the faith!
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