England Expects and A Dead Dream....

An epiphany occurred to me on Sunday evening as, like millions of others, I was bored senseless by our national football team in their extremely laboured destruction of Ecuador.

Is it possible that my suggestion to friends of 'would you be happy if they played rubbish, ground out 1-0 wins in every game and won the world cup?' could be coming true.

For the first time in the whole tournament, I'm quite confident of a result against Portugal. I think the players will be up for it and have shown their ability to stifle the opposing side's attacks very well. The only real chance Ecuador made was due to John Terry's slight lapse in the first 15 minutes, while the goals against Sweden just came from very obvious defensive mistakes. Avoid these in these latter stages and we will be water-tight.

Alas, it wasn't to be for the Aussies going down to the worst refereeing this side of the Portugal game a day earlier. Quite how anyone can argue there is a case for a penalty when Grosso just falls over Neill's already grounded body is difficult for me to see.

Anyway, it wasn't to last and the Aussies acquitted themselves well. Well played to all the Boro boys, in particular Super Schwarz, without whom the score could have been very different yesterday.