It's been a few hours now and I've had some time to reflect on the game, but still the England versus Paraguay game was one of the most boring affairs I've seen in a long while. There's something to be said against the whole scoring early thing, which is that if a team does it then a lot of the time they'll just go into sitting back, dull-as-a-rather-dimly-lit-grey-thing, mode. Which seemed to be what England did. The pundits seemed to give England quite a lot of praise for the first half performance, but I'm not sure why as we didn't do anything. And then for the second half we proceeded to do even less. Not that Paraguay looked at all threatening, but I'd have liked to see something that provided a modicum of entertainment. Despite all that I'm still glad and releaved that we've got a win (and the associated 3 points) under our belt, and can hopefully go on to better things in the next game. Trinidad and Tobago look like they could be quite fiesty though and will be very much up for the game, but the Swedes were looking fairly poor and maybe England can break their tradition of shit performances against them. As any good manager does in a post match interview (with the possible exception of all the interviews that Mick McCarthy gave after Sunderland games last season) I'll try and take some positives from the game - Joe Cole was looking pretty good with some of his runs at the defenders down the left side, and Crouch keeps improving with some nifty bits of ball control.
Other than the England game I've managed to see 3 of the 4 other World Cup matches so far. I am liking the festival of football that it is.
After watching the opening Germany versus Costa Rica game yesterday I went to a pirate themed flatwarming party hosted by Ellie, who went to great lengths to bedeck her flat (aka the good ship the Three headed monkey) in a piratical theme. We all got dressed up approriately and had a swashbuckling time drinking much rum and grog. I recommend that everyone walk down a busy main road with about 10 other people dressed as pirates sometime - it provides amusement for all, especially when you go on a booze-based raiding party into Sainsburys.
Beard news - I have now entered uncharted territory with my growth in that I don't think I've gone 10 days without shaving before (well obviously that's not right as I didn't shave as a child, but you know what I mean!). There's the odd grey hair in the mix, but I fortunately don't have the classic signs of the ginger anywhere to be seen. I am still rather sparse and patchy though.
Band news - I'm on my way to being a proper drummer as today I purchased some drum sticks - I now just need something to hit.
You'd be lucky to have some ginger! "Ginger" comes from the latin for colour of the Gods you know.
ReplyDeleteOK, I made that up, but still.